BOSTON UNIVERISTY

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Thesis

SOCRATES AND NIETZSCHE

EROS FREE-SPIRITEDNESS AND THE FREE SPIRIT

by

JAMES W MARVEL

AA College of the Redwoods 2005BA University of California Berkeley 2008

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

2010

Approved by

First Reader __________________________________________________________ David Roochnik PhD Professor of Philosophy

Second Reader __________________________________________________________ Matthew Meyer PhD Lecturer in Philosophy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following professors who over the years of my education

have in one way or another helped me understand the topics that this thesis addresses

Daniel Coffeen Daniel Dahlstrom Garth Green Matthew Meyer Krzysztof Michalski

David Roochnik Allan Silverman and Hans Sluga I would like to thank all of my family

and friends for their unconditional love and support

For Laura

iii

SOCRATES AND NIETZSCHE

EROS FREE-SPIRITEDNESS AND THE FREE SPIRIT

JAMES MARVEL

ABSTRACT

This paper claims that Socrates is above all else a lover In order to argue for that

claim I turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about love

and why I am justified in calling him a lover In addition I discuss Alcibiadesrsquo speech

from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential argument of the

Symposium In the Symposium we are given three key characteristics of Socrates as told

by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique

I attempt to explain why these three characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates

as a lover why Socrates the lover is one of if not the main argument of the Symposium

and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we

accept my claims about Socrates as a lover I go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice

of love exhibited a kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the

kind of lover that we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I conclude with an

account of what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but

with a different kind of passion and a different object of love Socratesrsquo love is a love

motivated by lack and with wisdom as its object of affection whereas the free spiritrsquos

love is motivated through abundance and has life itself as its object of affection

iv

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Socrates 4

2 Socrates Through Nietzsche 26

3 Nietzsche On Socrates 33

4 The Free Spirit 42

Works Cited 55

Bibliography 57

v

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Approved by

First Reader __________________________________________________________ David Roochnik PhD Professor of Philosophy

Second Reader __________________________________________________________ Matthew Meyer PhD Lecturer in Philosophy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following professors who over the years of my education

have in one way or another helped me understand the topics that this thesis addresses

Daniel Coffeen Daniel Dahlstrom Garth Green Matthew Meyer Krzysztof Michalski

David Roochnik Allan Silverman and Hans Sluga I would like to thank all of my family

and friends for their unconditional love and support

For Laura

iii

SOCRATES AND NIETZSCHE

EROS FREE-SPIRITEDNESS AND THE FREE SPIRIT

JAMES MARVEL

ABSTRACT

This paper claims that Socrates is above all else a lover In order to argue for that

claim I turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about love

and why I am justified in calling him a lover In addition I discuss Alcibiadesrsquo speech

from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential argument of the

Symposium In the Symposium we are given three key characteristics of Socrates as told

by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique

I attempt to explain why these three characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates

as a lover why Socrates the lover is one of if not the main argument of the Symposium

and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we

accept my claims about Socrates as a lover I go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice

of love exhibited a kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the

kind of lover that we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I conclude with an

account of what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but

with a different kind of passion and a different object of love Socratesrsquo love is a love

motivated by lack and with wisdom as its object of affection whereas the free spiritrsquos

love is motivated through abundance and has life itself as its object of affection

iv

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Socrates 4

2 Socrates Through Nietzsche 26

3 Nietzsche On Socrates 33

4 The Free Spirit 42

Works Cited 55

Bibliography 57

v

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following professors who over the years of my education

have in one way or another helped me understand the topics that this thesis addresses

Daniel Coffeen Daniel Dahlstrom Garth Green Matthew Meyer Krzysztof Michalski

David Roochnik Allan Silverman and Hans Sluga I would like to thank all of my family

and friends for their unconditional love and support

For Laura

iii

SOCRATES AND NIETZSCHE

EROS FREE-SPIRITEDNESS AND THE FREE SPIRIT

JAMES MARVEL

ABSTRACT

This paper claims that Socrates is above all else a lover In order to argue for that

claim I turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about love

and why I am justified in calling him a lover In addition I discuss Alcibiadesrsquo speech

from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential argument of the

Symposium In the Symposium we are given three key characteristics of Socrates as told

by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique

I attempt to explain why these three characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates

as a lover why Socrates the lover is one of if not the main argument of the Symposium

and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we

accept my claims about Socrates as a lover I go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice

of love exhibited a kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the

kind of lover that we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I conclude with an

account of what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but

with a different kind of passion and a different object of love Socratesrsquo love is a love

motivated by lack and with wisdom as its object of affection whereas the free spiritrsquos

love is motivated through abundance and has life itself as its object of affection

iv

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Socrates 4

2 Socrates Through Nietzsche 26

3 Nietzsche On Socrates 33

4 The Free Spirit 42

Works Cited 55

Bibliography 57

v

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

SOCRATES AND NIETZSCHE

EROS FREE-SPIRITEDNESS AND THE FREE SPIRIT

JAMES MARVEL

ABSTRACT

This paper claims that Socrates is above all else a lover In order to argue for that

claim I turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about love

and why I am justified in calling him a lover In addition I discuss Alcibiadesrsquo speech

from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential argument of the

Symposium In the Symposium we are given three key characteristics of Socrates as told

by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique

I attempt to explain why these three characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates

as a lover why Socrates the lover is one of if not the main argument of the Symposium

and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we

accept my claims about Socrates as a lover I go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice

of love exhibited a kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the

kind of lover that we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I conclude with an

account of what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but

with a different kind of passion and a different object of love Socratesrsquo love is a love

motivated by lack and with wisdom as its object of affection whereas the free spiritrsquos

love is motivated through abundance and has life itself as its object of affection

iv

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Socrates 4

2 Socrates Through Nietzsche 26

3 Nietzsche On Socrates 33

4 The Free Spirit 42

Works Cited 55

Bibliography 57

v

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Socrates 4

2 Socrates Through Nietzsche 26

3 Nietzsche On Socrates 33

4 The Free Spirit 42

Works Cited 55

Bibliography 57

v

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Introduction

ldquoThe only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzschersquos is

precisely to use it to deform it to make it groan and

protest And if commentators then say I am being faithful

or unfaithful to Nietzsche that is of absolutely no interestrdquo

ndashMichel Foucault1

The Foucault quote is not intended to simply be provocative but to serve notice

toward the kind of paper I hope to produce in discussing Nietzschersquos free spirit Not only

to serve notice but to serve as a guiding principle to help the structure of my own

thoughts and remind the reader of the particular way in which I am approaching the topic

of the free spirit The aim of my investigation is not to correctly interpret Nietzschersquos

texts but to determine what kind of meaning his texts might elicit by way of an analysis

of Socrates as found in Platorsquos Symposium dialogue and how a certain understanding of

Socrates can help in an elucidation of Nietzschersquos free spirit I consider Foucaultrsquos quote

to serve as a kind of signpost for myself and my audience to help us situate ourselves

within this particular topic and to hopefully experience a type of freedom of thinking

while analyzing Nietzschersquos free spirit As to why I am adopting this Foucauldian

approach it is due to the lack of a definition of the lsquofree spiritrsquo in Nietzschersquos corpus

There are hints as to what the free spirit is but there is no clear definition Though I am

not attempting an exhaustive definition of what the free spirit is I will offer an argument

as to what I think a free spirit at its core very well might be

1 Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon (1980) 53-54

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

2

Most of Nietzschersquos writings concerning Socrates are critical in the same way

that most of Nietzschersquos texts are understood as a critique Despite Nietzschersquos critical

stance towards Socrates there is an identified admiration of Socrates2 What exactly was

Nietzsche admiring about Socrates I claim that Socrates even with all of the Platonic

baggage that Nietzsche so despised exhibited a free-spiritedness that Nietzsche admired

and to an extent adopted

What was it about Socrates that Nietzsche admired What characteristic did

Socrates exhibit that could be interpreted as free-spirited What was important about

Socrates for Nietzsche was that Socrates was a lover Socrates was a philosopher literally

a friend or lover of wisdom Socratesrsquo love was a love that drove Socrates to live his life

in a way that can be described as unique if not strange Socratesrsquo love of wisdom

compelled him to live his life in almost a type of service to wisdom In loving wisdom

above all else Socrates abandoned conventional values and sought to value wisdom in all

that he did

Now it is easy to conclude that Nietzsche disagreed with what Socrates took to be

wise (or what Plato took to be wise) but the abandonment of convention driven by a

love for wisdom is what piqued Nietzschersquos thinking Whatever can be said of the lsquorealrsquo

Socrates we may be able to conclude things such as his adherence to the existence of an

2 Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Nietzsche called lsquoNietzschersquos Admiration of Socratesrsquo After citing a passage from The Birth of Tragedy (76) Kaufmann writes ldquoNietzschersquos conception of Socrates was decisively shaped by Platorsquos Symposium and Apology and Socrates became little less than an idol for himrdquo (393) Furthermore in a footnote Kaufmann adds that a young Nietzsche called the Symposium his Lieblingsdichtung roughly in English his favorite poem

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

3

immortal soul an afterlife the good and so on3 These lsquootherworldlyrsquo features of

Socratesrsquo wisdom are what Nietzsche despises as well as Socratesrsquo value of wisdom

above all else but the way in which Socrates threw himself into the search for wisdom a

search founded in love is what inspires Nietzsche to both argue with and admire

Socrates

I have claimed that Socrates was above all else a lover In order to back up my

claim I will turn to Platorsquos Symposium to explore the claims that Socrates makes about

love and why I might be justified in calling him a lover In addition I will discuss

Alcibiadesrsquo speech from the Symposium and argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech is an essential

argument of the Symposium In the Symposium I think we are given three key

characteristics of Socrates as told by Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection

Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I will attempt to explain why these three

characteristics are a part of what constitutes Socrates as a lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo

speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates If we accept my claims about

Socrates as a lover I will go on to argue that while Socratesrsquo practice of love exhibited a

kind of free-spiritedness Socratesrsquo practice of love is distinct from the kind of lover that

we find with Nietzschersquos free spirit In doing this I aim to conclude with an account of

what I take Nietzschersquos free spirit to be like Socrates at bottom a lover but with a

different kind of passion and a different object of love

3 It is hard to decipher what Socratesrsquo views are versus what Platorsquos views are in regard to these topics But for the purposes of this paper I will be assuming the views of Socrates as his own at least in terms of these views belonging to the character of Socrates that we are presented with

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Socrates

ldquoYou donrsquot appear to me to know that whoever comes into

close contact with Socrates and associates with him in

conversation must necessarily even if he began by

conversing about something quite different in the first

place keep on being led about by the manrsquos arguments

until he submits to answering questions about himself

concerning both his present manner of life and the life he

has lived hitherto And when he does submit to this

questioning you donrsquot realize that Socrates will not let him

go before he has well and truly tested every last detailrdquo

Nicias (Laches 187e6-188a2)

There are two places where Socrates makes explicit statements about love in the

Symposium that I want to examine One is prior to the beginning of the speeches that are

made in praise of love the other is at the end of Socratesrsquo speech on love where love is

spoken about through a story though it is not altogether clear whether Socrates is re-

telling an event in his life or if he is making up a persuasive fictional justification for his

idea of what love is The first instance is toward the beginning of the Symposium where

Socrates addresses the proposal for each person present to give a speech in praise of love

Socrates says this ldquoHow could I vote lsquoNorsquo when the only thing I say I understand is the

art of love [τὰ ἐρωτικά]rdquo (177d6-e1) Here we have Socrates admitting to something

that is rare in the Platonic dialogues an understanding of something The Socratic motif

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

5

throughout the Platonic dialogues is that what makes Socrates wise is that he knows that

he is not wise Yet in the Symposium we find Socrates making the claim that above all

else the only thing he understands is the art of love A more emphatic example of this is

found when Socrates concludes his speech with the following exhortation

This Phaedrus and the rest of you was what Diotima told me I was

persuaded And once persuaded I try to persuade others too that human

nature can find no better workmate for acquiring this [true virtue άρετὴν

ἀληθῆ] than Love Thatrsquos why I say that every man must honor Love

why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special

diligence and why I commend them to others Now and always I praise

the power and courage of Love so far as I am able (212b1-c1)

With these passages we find a Socrates who states that the only thing he understands is

the practice of love and furthermore that love is the best lsquoworkmatersquo or lsquohelperrsquo in

acquiring lsquotrue virtuersquo My purpose for examining these passages is not to show what

Socrates thinks love is but to show that Socrates was above all else a lover However I

think in order to show that Socrates is in fact a lover it is imperative that we try to

understand why Socrates is a lover why being a lover is valuable and what the object of

Socratesrsquo love is

Socrates claims that the only thing he understands4 is the art of love As

mentioned before this is a rare phenomenon for the Socrates found throughout the

Platonic dialogues Socrates making a positive claim pertaining to knowledge about

4 ἐπίστασθαι from the passive verb ἐπίσταμαι to understand to know or have insight (in) can also mean to be skilled or experienced (in) (Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary)

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

6

something5 How does this understanding about the art of love not contradict the well-

known wisdom of Socrates that he knows that is not wise or at least that he knows when

he does not know something I think we can find the answer to this problem in the

speech that Socrates gives in the Symposium in which he questions Diotima about people

who love wisdom

lsquoIn that case Diotima who are the people who love wisdom if they are

neither wise nor ignorantrsquo

lsquoThatrsquos obviousrsquo she said lsquoA child could tell you Those who love

wisdom fall in between those two extremes And Love is one of them

because he is in love with what is beautiful and wisdom is extremely

beautiful It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and as such is

in between being wise and being ignorantrsquo (204b1-7)

Here lsquoLoversquo is portrayed anthropomorphically as being neither ignorant nor being wise

lsquoLoversquo loves what is beautiful and wisdom is lsquoextremely beautifulrsquo Yet lsquoLoversquo itself is

not wise it loves that which it does not have or has not yet attained namely wisdom or

the state of being wise It is because of the love for wisdom that lsquoLoversquo is not ignorant

and yet its love for wisdom keeps lsquoLoversquo in between the extremes of ignorance and being

wise A bit later in the speech Diotima says that being a lover of wisdom is ldquohellipthe nature

of the Spirit called Loverdquo (204c1) lsquoLoversquo in this case may simply be understood as that

which provides a passion or desire for wisdom

5 It should be noted this is not the only time Socrates claims to know something eg in the Apology Socrates says ldquoI do know however that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong to disobey onersquos superior be he god or manrdquo (29b5-7) I do not intend to assimilate this example into my discussion but it might be worthwhile to think through in regards to my topic given that these positive knowledge statements by Socrates are so rare

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

7

Now consider the nature of Socratesrsquo wisdom he knows when he does not know

something6 If Socrates knows nothing then surely he cannot be wise But Socrates does

know something he knows that he does not know anything Knowing that one does not

know something may be a type of wisdom but it is far different from the sense of being

wise where one knows everything I think this lsquoknowing everythingrsquo is the sense in which

being wise is the extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum from ignorance So if

Socrates has any wisdom which he does claim to have but he is not wise then Socrates

must fall somewhere between being ignorant and being wisemdashmuch like lsquoLoversquo from the

speech in the Symposium Incorporate this with Socratesrsquo claim that the one thing he does

understand is the art of love and we can see how Socratesrsquo wisdom of not knowing

anything follows from the position of someone who is a lover Socratesrsquo wisdom is a

product of his practice of love whereby claiming not to know anything is a result of his

love of wisdom a wisdom that is neither wise nor ignorant In any case what motivates

Socrates what compels him what he understands what he honors what he praises what

he practices and what he persuades others to do is to practice the art of love

For Socrates being a lover of wisdom leads one to discover what is most valuable

about human life to give birth to true virtue This is revealed through the speech that

Socrates gives in the Symposium where Diotima ends her instruction of Socrates with the

conclusion that for anyone who is a lover because of their love for wisdom the

6 This meaning of Socratic wisdom is derived from the Apology GMA Grube translates the passage this way ldquoI do not think I know what I do not knowrdquo (21d5-6) Allan Bloom translates it this way ldquoAll I know is that I know nothingrdquo (Love and Friendship 431) What is important about Socratic wisdom for this paper whether the passage I cite is understood through Grubersquos or Bloomrsquos translation is that it is a kind of honesty When one does not know something one does not pretend to know what one does not know

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

8

possibility for them to see beauty (or the beautiful) itself is generated and hence give

birth to true virtue (211d2-212b1)7 Why is giving birth to true virtue so valuable We

will need to examine what is called the ascension of eros that takes place in the

Symposium and situate this ascension within the story that Socrates is telling about eros

Prior to giving his speech Socrates engages Agathon in some questioning of what

Agathon thinks love is It is imperative to consider this exchange as it sets the stage for

the account of love that Socrates goes on to provide in his speech specifically in regard

to love being a desire for something that is lacked Socrates asks Agathon whether

someone has already has something that they love or not Agathon answers that it is

likely that someone does not have the thing that they love (200a5-7) Socrates responds

thus ldquolsquoInstead of whatrsquos likelyrsquo said Socrates lsquoask yourself whether itrsquos necessary that

this be so a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need otherwise if it

were not in need it would not desire itrsquordquo (200a9-b2) Agathon agrees that it is necessary

that someone does not have the thing that they love This is the introduction of love being

a desire for what is lacked Socrates then goes on to question what is happening when

people say they desire what they already have using the examples of riches and health

and strength as things that one has yet one loves Socrates explains the phenomenon this

7 I do not intend to evaluate the arguments of whether or not love of wisdom actually can produce true virtue I only want make my audience aware of the seriousness that Socrates placed on being a lover such that being a lover was the quintessential characteristic of who Socrates was If we can imagine all of the various aspects that we are given of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues it seems plausible to be able to view all that Socrates does and says as actions and words of a lover of wisdom The Symposium provides us with some explicit statements about love itself but in other dialogues Socrates can be found praising philosophy in general and encouraging others to pursue it as a way of life The meaning of the pursuit of philosophy cannot be underestimated it literally means to love wisdom In light of what Socrates says about love in the Symposium to pursue philosophy is to be a lover in the way that Socrates practices it to love wisdom yet not be wise to practice the art of love and not be ignorant

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

9

way ldquoWhenever you say I desire what I already have ask yourself whether you donrsquot

mean this I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as wellrdquo (200d4-6)

Agathon agrees to this as well This builds on love as a desire for what is lacked where

even when someone has something in the present what they actually desire is to possess

the thing they have now into the future In other words they do not yet have the thing in

the future and that is what they desire they cannot desire what they have in the present

instead they desire to possess what they have into the future which is a kind of lack8

Literally one does not possess the things in the future so the desire to posses something

into the future is the desire for something that one does currently not posses The two

main points that are given about love in this exchange is that love is a desire for

something that is lacked and love is a desire to possess that which one does have into the

future These two points are the building blocks that Socrates employs as the foundation

of his speech

Diotima tells Socrates that what Love wants is not beauty but reproduction and

birth in beauty (206e2-4) Diotima claims that all beings strive for reproduction because

reproduction goes on forever which is meant to show that the desire for reproduction is

really a desire for immortality Now there are two senses in which love is a desire for

immortality The first is a kind of bodily love that leads to sex and offspring The second

is a kind of soul love that leads to giving birth to true virtue and possessing the good

forever ldquoA lover must desire immortality along with the good if what we agreed earlier

is right that Love wants to possess the good forever It follows from our argument that 8 This is the idea that Socrates builds on when he says that love is the desire for immortality That is in his speech Socrates adds that it is not just that one desires something into the future but that one desires to possess the objects of desire forever

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

10

Love must desire immortalityrdquo (207a1-4) The desire for immortality is a proposed

solution to the problemitization of time That is one has a finite amount time of being

alive and Diotima is presenting immortality as a way in which all beings at least in a

very basic sexual level seek to confront their mortality with the desire of immortality I

want to claim that while love may be a desire for immortality when we are talking about

love of bodies the ultimate object of affection for the lover of wisdom is not immortality

but the good

What follows is what I take to be a roadmap of the ascension of love Take a lover

as starting out as a lover of bodies desiring immortality through reproduction If a lover

loves bodies in the right way it leads to a recognition of the beauty of bodies In loving

beautiful bodies one realizes that what they really love is the beauty of the bodies not the

bodies themselves so one seeks to love a form of beauty that makes all the bodies

beautiful (210a6-b5) This leads a lover to think that the beauty of a personrsquos soul is more

beautiful than the beauty of a personrsquos body So much so that the lover no longer cares

about the beauty of a personrsquos body but will be content to love a physically ugly person

if their soul is beautiful Through loving a personrsquos soul one begins to focus on the

beauty of a personrsquos activities their customs and their knowledge and through loving a

personrsquos soul the lover is lead to what is most generally beautiful within a personrsquos soul

wisdom (210b6-e2) One begins by loving bodies turns to loving a personrsquos soul and

through loving a personrsquos soul the lover is exposed to the expressions of a personrsquos soul

which in turn are more beautiful than the personrsquos soul These expressions (activities

customs and knowledge) allows the lover to discover that wisdom is the most beautiful

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

11

expression of personrsquos soul and the lover focuses their love on the pursuit of wisdom

leaving bodies and souls behind By turning all their love towards wisdom pursuing

wisdom above all else one is able to encounter beauty itself (211c1-d1) This encounter

with beauty itself is what allows the lover to give birth to true virtue (212a5-7) Giving

birth to true virtue is so lsquovaluablersquo because it fulfills the longing for immortality much

like the basic sexual urge that produces offspring is an example of the desire for

immortality for a lover of bodies Now Diotima does not say that when someone does

give birth to true virtue that they actually become immortal instead she says that ldquohellipif

any human being could become immortal it would be he [he who has given birth to true

virtue]rdquo (212b1) But giving birth to true virtue (analogously with giving birth to

children) is what would allow a lover to become immortal and pursue the ultimate object

of eros the possession of the good forever A base eros desires reproduction because it is

seen as an immortal act A base eros desires immortality itself but a higher eros exists

within the same problem of time yet views immortality not as the ultimate object of

affection but as a means to an end Immortality is what would allow one to obtain the

ultimate object of affection the good In analyzing human behavior and explaining the

reproductive sex act as an expression of a desire for immortality Diotima gives us a

succinct explanatory answer to why it is that beings reproduce Human beings who

become lovers of the higher sort still have a desire for immortality too but instead of

engaging in sexual intercourse with other human beings these lovers seek to mix with

beauty itself and give birth to true virtue The analogy between a lover of bodies and a

lover of wisdom ends here though as a lover of wisdom does not seek immortality for the

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

12

sake of being immortal (as a lover of bodies does) a lover of wisdom seeks possession of

the good forever Possession of the good forever does require immortality but if

immortality is the ultimate object of affection then the lover of wisdom would not

continue to strive for the possession of the good That is when a lover of wisdom gives

birth to true virtue they lsquobecomersquo or lsquoare ablersquo at that point to be immortal If the lover of

wisdom sought immortality for the sake of immortality then the ascension of love would

end with giving birth to true virtue and being immortal However as Diotima has told us

the ascension has another higher step that of an immortal possession of the good itself

The good then and not immortality is the ultimate object of erotic affection

Although it may seem obvious it is worth analyzing what the object of Socratesrsquo

love is wisdom Socrates is a lover of wisdom but why As Socrates outlines in his

speech on love in the Symposium loving wisdom garners results for the lover That is

being a lover of wisdom is meant to facilitate the possession of certain objects of desire

In other words loving wisdom is necessarily a practice in which one aims to possess

what one lacks In the case of Socrates loving wisdom allows one to view not only

beautiful things but the beautiful itself In the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquohellip a man

finds it truly worth while to live as he contemplates essential beautyrdquo (211d2-3) The

lover of wisdom through lsquocontemplating essential beautyrsquo or encountering the beautiful

itself is able to give birth to true virtue Now the lover of wisdom through hisher

contact with the beautiful itself breeds true virtue and through breeding true virtue the

lover of wisdom becomes immortal (212a7-10) and through this mixture of viewing the

beautiful breeding true virtue and becoming immortal the lover of wisdom gains

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

13

possession of the good forever Again in the words of Socrates via Diotima ldquoIn a word

then love is wanting to possess the good foreverrdquo (206a11)

Loving wisdom ultimately allows one to make the good itself theirs forever (as

opposed to good things in passing) The lover of wisdom is not wise (or lacks an all-

knowing wisdom) and the lover of wisdom lacks the good itself These two instances of

lack seem to be what motivate the practice of the art of love the erotic desire for wisdom

that leads to possession of the good The idea that what a Socratic lover loves is

something he lacks is I think a key difference between the kind of lover that Socrates is

and the kind of lover that Nietzschersquos free spirit is But before I get to Nietzsche I want to

turn to the conclusive speech of the Symposium the speech of Alcibiades

What are we to make of Alcibiadesrsquo speech at the end of the Symposium Is it

simply a throwaway piece of dramatic set-up or perhaps only an entertaining exposeacute

about the personality of Socrates I will argue that Alcibiadesrsquo speech itself contains an

essential argument of the Symposium That is if we are told that the only thing that

Socrates knows is ldquothe art of loverdquo (τὰ ἐρωτικά) I take it that we as readers must be

given an argument that Socrates is a lover somewhere in the dialogue In making this

argument I will also be making a further point that the Symposium is itself not a praise of

love nor is the Symposium meant only as a celebration or introduction to the conceptual

articulation that Socrates makes through the avatar of Diotima Rather the Symposium is

a celebration of and introduction to Socrates himself in Alcibiadesrsquo speech we get to

meet not an image of Socrates but perhaps the true Socrates

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

14

ldquohellipif I say anything thatrsquos not true you can just interrupt if you want and correct

me at worst therersquoll be mistakes in my speech not liesrdquo ndashAlcibiades (214e12-

215a1)

Before Alcibiades begins his speech Erayximachus informs him that each person

present has given a speech in praise of love and invites Alcibiades to do the same

Alcibiades refuses to give a speech in praise of love for two reasons for one he is drunk

and secondly he is afraid Socrates will beat him up if he praises anyone else even a god

(214c9-d6) So instead of praising love Alcibiades agrees to give a speech in praise of

Socrates The first point that Alcibiades makes about Socrates is Socratesrsquo ability as a

speaker Alcibiades remarks that when people hear Socrates speak they ldquohellipare all

transported completely possessedrdquo (215d3) This produces a particular effect in

Alcibiades ultimately producing a feeling of shame concerning his own life I take this to

be the first point about Socrates the lover Socratesrsquo words inspire a person to examine

their own life

The next point Alcibiades makes about Socrates is that Socrates appears a certain

way in public Alcibiades describes Socrates as constantly following around beautiful

boys ldquoin a perpetual dazerdquo and also mentions Socratesrsquo self-describing idiom that ldquohersquos

ignorant and knows nothingrdquo (216d2-4) Although Socrates does follow beautiful boys

around in a daze he does not really care about their beautiful looks Alcibiades claims

that Socrates is even contemptuous towards a personrsquos looks their wealth or their fame

Alcibiades sums up Socratesrsquo actions in public this way ldquohis whole life is one big game

mdasha game of ironyrdquo (216e4) The second point about Socrates the lover is that he is ironic

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

15

at least in the sense that he seems to value things of convention but actually has a disdain

for them but also in the sense that he projects an image of himself that is not a true

reflection of himself Irony is an embodiment of the middle ground of wisdom that

Socrates occupies irony is the performance of not being ignorant and not being wise

The third thing that Alcibiades points out about Socrates is Socratesrsquo endurance

and bravery Alcibiades recites instances of Socratesrsquo indifference to cold weather his

ability to drink and not get drunk his ability to operate with little or no sleep and his

bravery during battle Alcibiades sums Socratesrsquo qualities up in this way ldquoYou could say

many other marvelous things in praise of SocrateshellipBut as a whole he is unique he is

like no one else in the past and no one else in the presentmdashthis is by far the most amazing

thing about himrdquo (221c1-4) The third point about Socrates the lover is his particular

uniqueness That is it seems in all that Socrates does he sets himself apart from others in

a way that makes him conspicuous

As stated in the introduction we have three characteristics of Socrates as told by

Alcibiades Socrates inspires self-reflection Socrates is ironic and Socrates is unique I

will attempt to explain why these three characteristics are what constitute Socrates as a

lover and why Alcibiadesrsquo speech about Socrates is a true representation of Socrates

ldquohellipI honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligencerdquo ndash

Socrates (212b5-6)

Socrates gives a speech about love specifically a speech intended to show what

love is In his speech Socrates provides an outline of how a person can be a lover which

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

16

consists in identifying what the object of a lover should be9 In short Socrates defines

love as a means to a certain kind of life a life that through a love of wisdom is able to see

beauty itself give birth to true virtue become immortal and ultimately possess the good

How do the three characteristics of Socrates that Alcibiades described correspond to the

kind of love that Socrates laid out in his own speech

So Socratesrsquo words inspire people to reflect upon their own lives but not any

kind of general principle of self-reflection there seems to be a specific kind of critique

that Socrates encourages others to use in their self-reflection Alcibiades speaks in detail

about the kind of self-reflection that Socratesrsquo words inspire ldquohelliphe makes me admit that

my political career is a waste of time while all that matters is just what I most neglect

my personal shortcomings which cry out for the closest attentionrdquo (216a4-7) Here we

see a self-reflection that focuses on what might be aptly described as defects in onersquos

character The self-reflection that Socrates inspires seems to be congruent with the

production of a life of virtue That is self-reflection allows one to acknowledge defects in

character and to provide at the very least the option of changing the defects in character

due to the acknowledgment of them Moreover Alcibiades tells us that Socrates gives

instruction on what Alcibiades ought to do to be a lover himself (although Alcibiades

admits that after Socrates is no longer around he goes back to his old ways) The self-

reflection that Socrates inspires can be seen as an instrumental tool in living a virtuous

life which is a necessary aspect of being a lover

9 Again I am not interested here in discussing the veracity of Socratesrsquo claims about love I am interested in Socratesrsquo claim that he is a practitioner of the kind of love that he defines in his speech

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

17

What is to be made of Socrates as an ironic figure in the context of Socrates as a

lover Why does Socrates present himself in a way that does not seem to be consistent

with how Socrates actually is If we take Socrates to be a practitioner of love and if we

accept that self-reflection is one of the practices of being a lover then it follows that

Socrates not only inspires self-reflection through his words but is also involved in the

practice of self-reflection himself If Socrates has engaged in self-reflection and has

corrected the defects in his own character thus producing a virtuous lifestyle we are left

with a Socrates that needs to communicate with others who have not yet engaged in self-

reflection In order to communicate with those who have not begun to practice self-

reflection Socrates must take on a form of communication that others can understand In

this sense when Socrates presents himself in a way that is not a true reflection of himself

we can gather that Socrates is doing this only in so far as it is a requirement in order for

other people to understand him Thus when Socrates is following beautiful boys around

or spending his time with the wealthy and political elites of society he is engaged in a

discourse with them that they can understand he obeys convention to allow for

communication Of course when employing irony one is reliant upon another person to

understand the irony That is one might say misinterpret irony as sarcasm In this sense

irony does not always serve the purpose of clear communication instead it may even

confuse some listeners In a way Socratesrsquo irony is intended for those who have ears to

hear those who can properly interpret Socrates as ironic something that Alcibiades has

correctly recognized in Socrates

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

18

The other aspect of irony that Alcibiades describes is Socratesrsquo disdain for the

conventions or trappings that everyone engages in including Socrates himself When

Socrates begrudgingly engages with others via social convention he may even appear to

appreciate them but the true Socrates holds contempt for many of things that others

value A nice illustration of this is found in the beginning of the Symposium where we

find Socrates getting ready for a visit to Agathonrsquos house by bathing and putting on his

fancy sandalsmdashboth very unusual events (174a2-3) Socrates gives an explanation for his

odd behavior this way ldquohellipnaturally I took great pains with my appearance Irsquom going to

the house of a good-looking man I had to look my bestrdquo (174a8-9) Socratesrsquo response

can be read in a variety of ways as ironic but in particular it can be seen as an

appeasement of social convention so that Socrates will best be able to communicate with

Agathon and the others who are present But why would this serve as a helpful tool in

communication I take it to be an appeal to the kind of erotic desires that Socrates judges

Agathon to have and that by appealing to those erotic desires Agathon will be more apt

to listen to the words that Socrates will utter In other words Socrates does not

underestimate the power of conventions and the way in which people love things of

convention just as much as he loves wisdom So when Socrates bathes and puts on his

fancy sandals in order to elevate himself within a social circle Socrates sees himself as

lowering himself to their standards but for the sake that he may better educate them

concerning the true nature of love Alcibiades seems to give an accurate account of

Socratesrsquo life when he says that it is one big game of irony I think Alcibiades has put his

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

19

finger on something important that the other people at Agathonrsquos house may very well

fail to notice

So far I have looked at how irony is used by Socrates as a peculiar means of

communication one that allows Socrates to communicate the wisdom he has with others

but at the same time can conceal the truths that Socrates seeks to express That is if being

ironic is an acting-out of Socratesrsquo wisdom Socrates might seem to his listener to be

ignorant or wise Yet Socrates rejects the notion of being ignorant or wise instead having

a wisdom that is in-between being ignorant or wise This lsquoin-between-nessrsquo of wisdom is

what produces the ironic speaking and acting of Socrates But how is Socratesrsquo ironic

stance an instance of Socrates the lover If we grant that Socratesrsquo conception of love is

right and that Socrates is a lover according to his own account of love we can accept

that Socrates is intent on leading a life through a love of wisdom that aspires to

knowledge of the beautiful true virtue and the good If all of this is true it begs the

question how ought a lover of the Socratic sort conduct oneself Socrates may very well

be a lover but he is still interlocked with a world that does not share his conclusions

when it comes to the subject of love In order to be a lover and proliferate love Socrates

assumes the only position available towards things that are not worthy of love irony

While Socrates does disdain things that are not worthy of love he takes a position that

allows him to continually engage with the very things that he disdains He could take a

straightforward position of disdain that could be likened to anger but that would seem to

defeat his stance as a lover That is who would want to talk to an angry person If

Socratesrsquo disdain took the form of anger it seems he would have a terribly hard time

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

20

engaging with people about love Socratesrsquo irony is highly effective in that even though

Alcibiades recognizes that Socrates disdains many things about him Alcibiades still

proclaims that Socrates is one of the best speakers he has ever heard10 It seems that irony

is a necessary style for a lover to employ in order to maintain communication with others

in the service of love but also to be a lover That is Socratesrsquo ironic stance is not only

towards others it is also towards himself The erotic desire for wisdom a wisdom that is

both not ignorant and not wise produces the ironic stance of Socrates that allows him to

engage in activities that do not seem to conform to the lsquohigherrsquo things of love By

engaging with others who are not lovers and by obeying social conventions in order to

engage with them Socrates has to view some of his own actions with disdain By bathing

and putting on his fancy sandals Socrates is apparently a lover of the same sort as

Alcibiades But in order to maintain his status as a lovermdashin his own waymdashSocrates

views himself with the same disdain that he holds for others Irony is a position used as

an external projection for communication but it is also used as an internal mirroring that

captures the paradoxical nature of a Socratic lover who does things that are not attuned to

the dictates of Socratic love In these two senses we can see how irony is utilized as a

practice of the lover

Alcibiades explains the uniqueness of Socrates explicitly through various feats of

endurance and bravery But Socratesrsquo uniqueness is implicit throughout most of

Alcibiadesrsquo speech Whether it is Alcibiades speaking about Socrates as an orator a

10 Although while Alcibiades praises Socrates in spite of Socratesrsquo ironic stance it should be noted that Socratesrsquo ironic positioning was not appreciated by everyone and could be seen as a kind of arrogance Perhaps the kind of thing that led to his conviction in the court of Athens But just imagine if Socrates spoke his mind freely without the use of irony imagine how arrogant Socrates would sound then

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

21

thinker a drinker an abstainer or as an arguermdashin almost every respect in which

Alcibiades speaks of SocratesmdashSocrates is represented as set apart from everyone else I

do not think that Socrates is striving to be unique in all that he does rather I take it that

being unique just necessarily follows from the first two practices of self-reflection and

ironic game playing That is by being a lover one will engage in practices that place a

strict emphasis on living a life with a love for wisdom geared towards knowledge of the

beautiful true virtue and the good When one engages in the practices of being a lovermdash

in the Socratic sensemdashone will necessarily be unusual in comparison to the conventional

practices of love that others are engaged in It even seems plausible that the extent to

which Socrates is unique could be a type of measurement of how well he is practicing the

art of love That is the extent to which Socrates is seen as unique is a way of confirming

the extent to which Socrates is practicing self-reflection and ironic game playing From

the picture that Alcibiades paints it seems that Socrates is practicing self-reflection and

ironic game playing almost constantly

ldquoIrsquoll try to praise Socrates my friends but Irsquoll have to use an image And though he

may think Irsquom trying to make fun of him I assure you my image is no joke it aims

at the truthrdquo ndashAlcibiades (215a4-b1)

Alcibiades enters Agathonrsquos house after all of the other speeches have been made

the particular point being that Alcibiades has not heard Socratesrsquo articulation of what love

is And yet Alcibiadesrsquo speech in praise of Socrates provides us with a detailed account of

how Socrates is the kind of lover that he outlined in his own speech Why Here we have

to take into account Plato as author of the dialogue and try to posit an answer to this

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

22

question I hold that there are two main arguments of the Symposium Socratesrsquo speech on

and articulation of love and the argument that Socrates is a lover which is found within

Alcibiadesrsquo speech The distinction here is important in respect to whether Socrates is

simply giving another glorious account of love in his speech or if Socrates is making a

serious attempt at sharing some knowledge that he has with regard to love Without

Alcibiadesrsquo speech which itself is an argument that Socrates is a lover in the way in

which Socrates defines love Socratesrsquo speech would be susceptible to the criticism that it

is just another fancy-sounding myth about love Instead Plato has chosen to give us a

glimpse of Socrates as a lover in the world That is whether or not Socratesrsquo articulation

of love is correct is irrelevant for us here What is relevant is that Socrates by being

recognized as employing the practices of love in his life is consistent with the

articulation that he has given concerning love By showing us that Socrates is a lover

especially through the dramatic effect of a speech by someone who was not present for

Socratesrsquo speech about love Plato is pointing us to the importance of being a lover not

simply of knowing what love is

If the Symposium ended after Socratesrsquo speech we could know what love is but

then what Alcibiades tells us about a man who is so amazingly gifted and unique in so

many ways and it turns out that at bottom the reason Socrates is so gifted and unique is

because he is a lover ldquoSocrates the loverrdquo is meant to show that it is possible and

worthwhile to pursue the lifestyle of the lover What makes Platorsquos dramatic use of

Alcibiades so strong is that Alcibiades is unaware of the fact that he is confirming the

conception of love that Socrates gave by giving an honest account of Socratesrsquo life By

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

23

having Alcibiades being unaware Plato is attempting to remove any skepticism that one

might have about Socratesrsquo ability to be the kind of lover that he outlines in his speech

This is because Alcibiades has no reason to say things about Socrates to make him look a

certain way to make Socratesrsquo life map on to the account of love that Socrates has given

Instead Alcibiades unleashes a torrent of truth that he even intends to be critical and

harsh towards Socrates What we end up with is an objective account of Socrates that just

so happens to align with the conception of love that Socrates had just finished giving

If we read the Symposium as a dialogue whose argument is only that love is such

and such a thing and that one must do this and that in order to be a lover I think we miss

an integral argument of the Symposium Socratesrsquo articulation of love in his speech is a

conceptual framework that may or may not be correct It is a story about a conversation

between a young Socrates and Diotima a woman who taught Socrates about love But

that is all it is a story Perhaps even compelling but without Alcibiadesrsquo conclusive

speech it can easily be placed alongside the other speeches in the Symposium with the

unique thing about it being its claim to giving an account of what love is instead of only

being a praise to love However Alcibiadesrsquo speech is a radical departure from the

previous speeches in that his speech is in praise of a person namely Socrates

Within the context of the dialogue I think it is fair to say that Alcibiades gives us

an objective account of Socrates11 Of course we are always subject to the devices of

Plato and what he thought of Socrates But Alcibiadesrsquo speechmdashand the intimate details

11 I take it this is an objective account of Socrates not in the sense of who the actual historical person was but at least an objective account of a character within the dramatic scene of the dialogue

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

24

that are shared there about his attempts at seducing Socratesmdashserves as the kind of

writing that engenders a readership to see that honesty is taking place When Alcibiades

gives us a lsquowarts and allrsquo account of Socrates the philosopher we are allowed into the

particularities of Socratesrsquo life (real or not) that give us a greater context with which to

understand the figure of Socrates a figure who is known for correcting others in their

speeches yet even at the prompting of Alcibiades to correct any part that may not have

been true Socrates was silent

If we accept Socratesrsquo statement that the only thing he understands is the art of

love and if we accept that the art of love and its practice is the basis for Socratesrsquo

wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo a further question needs to be asked

Does Nietzsche think that Socrates is free-spirited at all And if the answer to this

question is yes is it Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love that Nietzsche might recognize as

what is free-spirited about Socrates In trying to answer these questions I ask my

audience to reflect upon the Foucault quote at the beginning of this paper Nietzschersquos

claims about Socrates as a free spirit are so bare that it may seem impossible to come to

any conclusions on the matter but I want to argue that from the few explicit statements

that are available we can fill out a view of Socrates that is consistent with the analysis of

Socrates I have given thus far and a plausible representation of how Nietzsche

understood Socrates as free-spirited In this sense I may wander away from any textual

support and hence some may say from a true representation of Nietzschersquos thought I am

at ease with this as what I am after is the spirit of Nietzschersquos thinking using the texts as

a jumping-off point to explore what the free spirit could be

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

25

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Socrates Through Nietzsche

ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me that I am almost always

fighting with himrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 207 cited

from Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe)

Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates being free-spiritedmdashsee for example this

aphorism named after Socratesrsquo wife lsquoXanthippersquo in Human All Too Human ldquomdash

Socrates found the sort of wife that he neededmdashbut even he would not have sought her

had he known her well enough the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone

that farrdquo (233-234) In this part of the aphorism Nietzsche suggests that if Socrates had

known Xanthippe better he would not have married her that even Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness would not be enough to counter Xanthippe as a wife if he had known better

Nietzsche goes on in the aphorism to say that the home that Xanthippe kept was so

lsquoinhospitable and unhomelyrsquo that it forced Socrates out of the house and into the streets

Hence Xanthippe was exactly the kind of wife that Socrates needed one that led him to

the marketplace on a regular basis Now whatever we think of Nietzschersquos claims about

Xanthippe and the home that she kept are irrelevant for us What is important is that here

we find Nietzsche explicitly calling Socrates a lsquofree spiritrsquo

Again in an aphorism entitled lsquoFinallyrsquo from Human All Too Human we find

another allusion to Socrates as a free spirit ldquoThere are many sorts of hemlock and fate

usually finds an occasion for placing a cup of this poisonous drink to the lips of a free

spiritmdashin order to lsquopunishrsquo himrdquo (235) Here Nietzschersquos reference to Socratesrsquo fatal

cocktail gives us another example of Nietzsche identifying Socrates as a kind of free

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

27

spirit but the question about how or why Nietzsche views Socrates in this way remains

unanswered I have argued that Socrates in all that he does is primarily a lover

primarily a lover and specifically a lover of wisdom I want to argue that what is free-

spirited about Socrates (in the Nietzschean sense) is his practice of the art of love In

order to argue this I will analyze some of Nietzschersquos passages regarding Socrates and try

to understand them in relation to passages on the free spirit By doing this analysis I will

try to show that Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love maps onto an understanding of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Finally I will try to show the difference between Socratesrsquo free-

spirited practice of the art of love and Nietzschersquos free spirit who I claim is like

Socrates at bottom a lover yet with a different articulation of what it means to love and

with a different object of affection

I have tried to show that Socrates is primarily a lover and now I want to show that

this aspect of Socrates is what Nietzsche most admired In The Gay Science12 Nietzsche

expresses his admiration for Socrates in the following way ldquoI admire the courage and

wisdom of Socrates in everything he did saidmdashand did not say This mocking and

enamored monster and pied piper of Athens who made the most overweening youths

tremble and sob was not only the wisest chatterer of all time he was equally great in

silencerdquo (272) Here we have Nietzsche admiring the courage and wisdom of Socrates

There is no explicit mention here of Nietzsche admiring Socrates as a lover but with a

little work I think it will be fair to conclude that underneath Nietzschersquos explicit

statement there is an implicit admiration for Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love An

12 All citations from The Gay Science are cited by page number

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

28

important quote to bear in mind throughout this analysis is from Twilight of the Idols

where Nietzsche writes ldquoSocrates was also a great eroticrdquo (32)13 Here we have

Nietzschersquos explicit acknowledgment of Socrates as a great erotic or in other words a

great lover this is an important point in my analysis as I will try to marry these two

statements in order to make sense of my claim that Nietzsche admired Socrates because

he was a lover14

Nietzsche admired Socrates for ldquothe courage and wisdom that he employed in

everything he did saidmdashand did not sayrdquo I think here we find Nietzsche admiring

Socrates for the type of wisdom that Socrates had That is a wisdom that knows when

one does not know something This is a type of wisdom that provides one with the ability

to know when to speak and when not to speak in regard to things that are known or

unknown It is a kind of wisdom that is between being ignorant and being wise

Nietzsche in his familiar sometimes hard-to-decipher style is simply praising Socrates

for the well-known Socratic wisdom ldquoI know when I do not know somethingrdquo This

admiration of Socrates should not be underestimated especially in light of Nietzschersquos

13 Nietzsche also identifies Socrates as lsquothe true eroticistrsquo in this passage from The Birth of Tragedy ldquoBut that a sentence of death rather than one of exile only was passed seems to have been brought about by Socrates himself with complete clarity and without the natural horror in the face of death according to Platorsquos account he approached death with the calm with which he left the symposium in the early dawn as the last of the revelers while behind him on the benches and on the floor his fellow carousers remained behind asleep dreaming of Socrates the true eroticistrdquo (76)14 For the sake of clarity and to provide some context for the quote that I am citing where Nietzsche identifies Socrates as a great erotic it is helpful to know that Nietzsche was engaged in a section in which he was trying to understand why Socrates fascinated the people of Athens Note that this lsquofascinationrsquo hearkens back to the third criteria that I proposed as part of what makes Socrates a lover namely Socratesrsquo uniqueness Nietzschersquos identification of Socrates as a lover is how he concludessummarizes the section in trying to explain the people of Athens fascination with Socrates

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

29

sustained argument throughout his corpus against many of the things that Socrates said in

Platorsquos dialogues For Nietzsche to write that he admired everything that Socrates did

said and did not say because of the courage and wisdom that Socrates employed in all

that he did said and did not say is an astounding moment in understanding Nietzschersquos

relationship with Socrates Citing the quote that begins this section Nietzsche

characterized his relationship with Socrates this way ldquoSocrates hellip stands so close to me

that I am almost always fighting with himrdquo (Twilight 207 cited from Wissenschaft und

Weisheit im Kampfe) Nietzsche was clearly engaged with Socrates in an ongoing

argument but it was an argumentative stance based on respect and admiration for

Socratesrsquo wisdom

In Twilight of the Idols under the chapter titled lsquoThe Problem of Socratesrsquo

Nietzsche in trying to explain why the people of Athens were fascinated with Socrates

identifies Socrates as a great erotic (32) That is Nietzsche recognizes Socrates as a

lover or as I have put it earlier Nietzsche sees Socrates as a practitioner of the art of

love If we accept my analysis of what it means for Socrates to be a lovermdashthat the basis

for Socratesrsquo wisdom is Socratesrsquo practice of the art of lovemdashthen it seems fair to

conclude that what Nietzsche really admires about Socrates is that Socrates is at bottom

a lover If we accept this claim that what Nietzsche most admired in Socrates was his

practice of the art of love the next question to propose is this how is Socratesrsquo practice

of the art of love free-spirited

We know that Nietzsche thought Socrates was free-spirited in some way As

pointed out previously Nietzsche makes allusions to Socrates as a free spirit in a couple

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

30

of aphorisms in Human All Too Human I do not want to claim that Socrates is a free

spirit but that there is a free-spiritedness to Socrates This is due in part to Nietzschersquos

own assertion in the preface of Human All Too Human that ldquohellipI invented for myself the

lsquofree spiritsrsquo to whom this heavy-hearted high-spirited book with the title Human All

Too Human is dedicated such lsquofree spiritsrsquo do not and did not existrdquo (6-7) Nietzsche

makes clear that whatever the free spirit means to him has not yet existed How does the

non-existence of a free spirit square with Nietzschersquos allusions to Socrates as a free

spirit I take it that this question highlights the importance of the distinction of

understanding Socrates as free-spirited rather than as a free spirit I want to further show

that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is what influenced Nietzsche to dwell on and invent the

free spirit But for now let us turn back to Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love and how it

is possible to understand Socrates as free-spirited

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says the following about the free spirit ldquoThe term lsquofree

spiritrsquo here is not to be understood in any other sense it means a spirit that has become

free that has again taken possession of itselfrdquo (283) I want to suggest that one of the

facets of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love was his self-control or as Nietzsche says of

Socrates his self-mastery (Twilight 33) We see one example of this played out in

Alcibiadesrsquo speech where Alcibiades relates the story of when he tried to seduce

Socrates even getting into bed with him Alcibiades is incredulous that Socrates is

impervious to his sexual advances (219a-e) Alcibiades is an extremely attractive young

man and the fact that Socrates does not respond to his advances displays a very real way

in which his self-mastery is put to the test There are many other examples of Socrates

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

31

displaying self-mastery but I think it is fair to say that what we are talking about when

we say self-mastery is a kind of mastery over (at least in the case of Socrates) instinctual

impulses At least this is the way that Nietzsche views Socratesrsquo self-mastery as a

mastery over the instincts

A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told

Socrates to his face that he was a monstrummdashthat he contained within him

every kind of foul vice and lust And Socrates answered merely lsquoYou

know me sirrsquomdash hellip When that physiognomist had revealed to Socrates

what he was a cave of every evil lust the great ironist uttered a phrase

that provides the key to him lsquoThat is truersquo he said lsquobut I have become

master of them allrsquo How did Socrates become master of himself (Twilight

30 33)

This self-mastery that Socrates had was part of the uniqueness of his character one of the

things that Alcibiades was in awe over and as argued above this uniqueness was a

characteristic of Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love If the free spirit is one who has

taken possession of oneself I want to claim that Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness is exemplified

in his self-mastery and thus what makes Socrates free-spirited is ultimately the fact that

he is a lover the trait that Nietzsche most admired in Socrates Now it could be that there

are other things about Socrates that might allow us to call him free-spirited but I take it

that for my purposes here this single aspect of self-mastery can serve to be a sufficient

reason for understanding Socrates as free-spirited Another reason I am relying on self-

mastery as a way of showing Socrates as free-spirited is simply for the fact that we can

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

32

find self-mastery as a key to understanding Socrates in one of Nietzschersquos texts

Nietzsche explicitly says that Socratesrsquo admitting to being master over every lust

lsquoprovides the keyrsquo to understanding Socrates I agree with Nietzsche that in

understanding Socrates as having a kind of self-mastery we are getting to the core of who

Socrates is a self-mastered free-spirited practitioner of love

This self-mastery may be the place where we can look to find Socratesrsquo free-

spiritedness and I think Nietzsche thought self-mastery was (in whole or in part) what

makes a free spirit free but while it is precisely Socratesrsquo self-mastery that allows for his

practice of the art of love to be understood as free spirited it is still distinct from

Nietzschersquos free spirit That is there are reasons that Socrates can only be free-spirited

and not a free spirit namely that while Socrates the lover might give rise to free-

spiritedness there is a point at which Nietzsche lsquothe criticrsquo takes issue with the type of

self-mastery Socrates employs what Socrates loves and the way in which Socrates loves

It is at this point we must turn to Nietzschersquos critique of Socrates the lover which will

serve to further differentiate Socratesrsquo free-spiritedness from the free spirit and lead to a

discussion of what Nietzschersquos free spirit might be

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

Nietzsche On Socrates

ldquohellipa profound delusion which first came into the world in

the person of Socratesmdashthe unshakeable belief that by

following the guiding thread of causality thought reaches

into the deepest abysses of being and is capable not only of

knowing but also even of correcting beingrdquo (The Birth of

Tragedy pg 82)

Nietzsche as stated previously deeply admired Socrates I have claimed that we

can understand Nietzschersquos admiration for Socrates through a single yet overarching

aspect of who and what Socrates is a lover The erotic drive is what fueled Socrates

Nietzschersquos understanding of this simple fact is what drove Nietzsche to be fascinated

with Socrates much like the people of Athens were Nietzsche recognized in Socrates

that to be at bottom a lover was the only worthy way of living onersquos life if one were to

undertake a philosophic investigation ie to be a philosopher This is what made

Socrates such a formidable intellectual adversary for Nietzsche Socrates had understood

what it means to live life right Nietzsche was stimulated to think deeply by the

challenging figure of Socrates and Nietzsche did think deeply The result Nietzsche

thinks that Socrates ultimately made a miscalculation in his understanding and

application of love

How does Socrates love Socrates loves passionately of this there is no question

Socratesrsquo pursuit of wisdom is a pursuit that I think Nietzsche readily agrees is an erotic

pursuit Why does Socrates love The answer to this question is really another question

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

34

what is Socratic love In asking lsquowhy does Socrates loversquo we end up with another

question because with love the why is the what Socrates cannot tell us why he loves

before giving an account of what love is As was described previously Socratesrsquo

understanding of love is that it is a passionate desire for something that one lacks What

Socrates believes he lacks is wisdom Socratesrsquo lack of wisdom coupled with Socratesrsquo

story about loversquos ascending nature ultimately fuels a desire for something else that he

lacks the good itself The nature of Socratesrsquo love that it is a passionate desire for

something he lacks is the first point where Nietzsche has a disagreement

For Nietzsche love is not a passionate desire for something that one lacks rather

love is a passionate possession of something That is for Nietzsche to be a lover is to

have abundance To be a lover is not just to have enough but to have too much

Nietzsche provides a rather beautiful expression of this kind of love in lsquoZarathustrarsquos

Prologuersquo when Zarathustra is engaged in a conversation15 with the sun

Behold I am weary of my wisdom like a bee that has gathered too

much honey I need hands outstretched to take it

I should like to give it away and distribute it until the wise among

men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their

wealth

To that end I must descend into the depths as you do at evening

when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too

superabundant star

15 I use the word conversation though it seems clear that Zarathustra is actually soliloquizing

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

35

Like you I must go downmdashas men to whom I want to descend

call it

So bless me then tranquil eye that can behold without envy even

an excessive happiness

Bless the cup that wants to overflow that the waters may flow

golden from him and bear the reflection of your joy over all the world

(39)

Here I think we can understand this soliloquy as reflecting the type of love I claim

Nietzsche embraces Zarathustra is loaded down with wisdom such that he needs to give

it away Zarathustra compares himself to the sun the lsquosuperabundant starrsquo that even

when it setsmdashor goes downmdashnever ceases to shine Such is the kind of love that

Zarathustra has a love that is superabundant and always possesses more which he

claims along with excessive happiness Then we have the metaphor of the overflowing

cup again symbolizing the never-ending bounty of love A problem with my

interpretation of this soliloquy is that love is nowhere to be found within it Yes the

soliloquy does seem to be describing the type of love that I claim Nietzsche embraces

but how am I justified in using it as an example or description of love The weight of my

interpretation of this soliloquy rests on the first words that Zarathustra utters after coming

down off the mountain and entering the forest where an old mansaint recognizes

Zarathustra and questions him16 The words that Zarathustra responds with are thus ldquoI

16 The actual questions that the old mansaint asks Zarathustra are not important for us here but for contextrsquos sake he recognizes that Zarathustra has changed and then proceeds in a type of questioning that could be summed up as what are you doing back here

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

36

love mankindrdquo (40) These first words are the answer to the old mansaintrsquos line of

questioning what are you doing back here Zarathustrarsquos first articulation of why he has

come down off the mountain is an expression of love for mankind Given the soliloquy

on desiring to share his wisdom comparing himself to the superabundant sun and the

overflowing cup I take it these metaphors give us a loose definition of what Zarathustra

takes himself to be doing when he answers the old mansaint loving mankind The

purpose of teasing a Nietzschean love out Zarathustrarsquos soliloquy is not to show that

Zarathustra is a lover per se (though I think he is) but simply to provide some textual

support for what I take to be the kind of love Nietzsche has in mind

Why does Nietzsche think love is a passionate possessing of something rather

than a passionate desire for something one lacks Nietzsche thinks Socratesrsquo love for

something he lacks is simply a misunderstanding of what love is That is not to say that

Socrates is not a lover because of his misunderstanding but it is to say that Socratesrsquo

error in loving is what results in him being free-spirited rather than a free spirit How do

we know that Socrates is mistaken about what love is To answer that question we have

to view the results of Socratesrsquo love ie the objects and discuss Nietzschersquos response to

what they mean The Nietzschean critique of Socratic love is clearest working backwards

so to speak from the desired objects to the nature of erotic desire

The good itself is the ultimate object of desire for Socrates a desire to possess the

good forever Of course to possess the good forever requires that one attain immortality

through the birth of true virtue The birth of true of virtue comes from viewing or seeing

the beautiful itself which in turn is a result of the initial love of wisdom Take the

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

37

pursuit of the possession of the good itself the result of the Socratic practice of the art of

love What is Nietzschersquos objection to this And what are we really talking about when

we say lsquothe good itselfrsquo I take the main thrust of Nietzschersquos criticism of the good itself

to be that when Socrates says lsquothe good itselfrsquo he is talking about that which gives value

to life That is the good itself is the highest value and value-giving entity which life is

judged according to The argument against the good itself is rather simple and can be

phrased in the following question how can we judge life (that which we already possess)

according to the good itself (that which we do not possess) And if the good itself ever

was in Socratesrsquo possession forever it seems his love would be fulfilled But love for

Socrates is a desire for something that one lacks It seems that if Socrates ever did gain

possession of the good itself forever he would no longer be capable of love This is a

problem for Socratic love that I am not going to attempt to resolve here but simply point

out that Nietzsche thinks this problem has no solution That is the ultimate object of

Socratic love the good itself is shown to kill the love that desires it

The other aspect of the good itself that Nietzsche is at odds with is its

lsquootherworldlinessrsquo17 That is not to say that it is not of our world but that it actually de-

17 In Section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche describes this lsquootherworldlinessrsquo by citing one of his own passages (section 344) from The Gay Science while critiquing the belief that compels one to the lsquounconditional will to truthrsquo ldquohellipmdashit is the belief in a metaphysical value a value in itself of truth as it is established and guaranteed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls with that ideal)hellipthe truthful one in that audacious and ultimate sense presupposed by the belief in science thus affirms another world than that of life nature and history and insofar as he affirms this lsquoother worldrsquo what Must he not precisely in so doing negate its counterpart this world our world hellip It is still a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science restsmdashwe knowers today we godless ones and anti-metaphysicians we too still take our fire from that great fire that was ignited by a thousand-year old belief that belief of Christians which was also Platorsquos belief that God is truth that truth is divine hellip But what if precisely this is becoming ever more implausible if nothing proves to be divine any longer unless perhaps error blindness liemdashif God himself proves to be our longest lierdquo (110)

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

38

values life in the world If one were to judge life (that which we possess) by the good

itself (that which we do not possess) then one would be valuing life according to

something that is essentially unknown Yet Nietzsche claims that Socrates went ahead

and valued life according to the good itself despite not possessing or knowing the good

itself This left life valueless for Socrates a theme that Nietzsche repeats in dwelling

upon the death scene of Socrates when he tells Crito that he owes a cock to Asclepius

(Phaedo 118a2-3)18 Nietzsche is positive that this is a sign that Socrates the great lover

carried out his love for wisdom and the good until the end and that Socrates convinced

himself through his practice of the art of love that life is a sickness only cured by death19

An aphorism to sum up the way in which Nietzsche thought of the practice of the art of

love in distinction from Socrates is this ldquoWhatever is done from love always occurs

beyond good and evilrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 90) That is for Nietzsche love does not

take into account good or evil in the objects that it possesses and love does not pursue

only good things rather than evil things instead love simply possesses in abundance

There is much more that can be said about Nietzschersquos disdain for the good itself

and striving for immortality20 for that matter but I would like to move on to the first step

18 One gave a cock to Asceplius on recovering from an illness Socrates seems to be saying that life is or his life has been an illness (Twilight 29)19 Quoting Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols ldquomdashDid he himself grasp that this shrewdest of all self-deceivers Did he at last say that to himself in the wisdom of his courage for death hellip Socrates wanted to diemdashit was not Athens it was he who handed himself the poison cup who compelled Athens to hand him the poison cup hellip lsquoSocrates is no physicianrsquo he said softly to himself lsquodeath alone is a physician here hellip Socrates himself has only been a long time sick helliprsquordquo(34)20 For a brilliant discussion of a comparison between Plato and Nietzschersquos conception of the good and immortalityeternity see Laurence D Cooperrsquos book entitled Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche There he writes ldquoThe thing that signifies the perfection of both will to power and erosmdashand therewith lifersquos highest fulfillment both for Nietzsche and for Platomdashis the embrace of eternityhellipboth Nietzsche and Plato speak of the core of philosophic longing and the peak of

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

39

in the ascension of Socratic love namely wisdom21 The first step in the ascension of

Socratic love is where I think we find the most common ground between Nietzsche and

Socrates yet still a bit of criticism For the remainder of this section I want to flesh out in

greater detail what the similarities are especially in regard to self-mastery which in turn

will give us a better insight into the ways in which Nietzsche distances himself from

Socrates

I have claimed that what Nietzsche admires about Socrates is that Socrates is a

lover I have also claimed that what is specifically free-spirited about Socrates the lover is

his self-mastery I think that the free spirit is like Socrates a lover And I think that what

it is that makes the free spirit a free spirit is also a kind of self-mastery or as Nietzsche

calls it self-possession Socrates loved wisdom and sought to master himself according

to what the pursuit of wisdom dictated The free spirit loves life and possesses

himherself through loving life While there is a similarity between Socratic self-mastery

and Nietzschean self-possession at least a similarity in form the practice of each is

distinct

Socratic self-mastery is for Nietzsche an antagonistic relationship between the

instincts and reason That is for Socrates to master himself he brings his instincts under

subjection to reason (reason which is employed through or instructed by if not

knowledge of the good itself then through the pursuit of possession of the good itself)

philosophic attainment in terms of eternityhellipIt is no overstatement to refer to eternal return as the good for Nietzscherdquo (274 275 276) Though I disagree with Cooperrsquos assessment about Nietzschersquos embracement of eternity and do think it is a big overstatement to equate the eternal return with the Platonic good it is nevertheless a very thought provoking book on these matters 21 Unfortunately I am skipping over any discussion of beauty itself and true virtue though an analysis of these steps in the ascension of Socratic love in the vein of this paper would be a worthwhile endeavor in the future

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

40

To reiterate Socratesrsquo self-mastery is an expression of free-spiritedness in that it is at

bottom an erotic practice However Socratesrsquo self-mastery ends up denying his practice

of the art of love Recall that gaining possession of the good seems to eliminate love

because once one gains what one lacks the love for the lacked object dissipates one at

least in respect to the object that is now possessed is no longer a lover In a similar

fashion Socratesrsquo practice of the art of love itself a passionate instinctual desire gives

birth to a rational faculty that rules over all passionate instinctual desires Socratesrsquo love

the one thing that he claims to know how to practice is not expressed through reason

love is ruled by reason Socrates takes us as far as he can in terms of living life as a lover

He takes us to a precipitous understanding of what love is how life can be lived as a

lover and exhibits a free-spiritedness that is rare amongst human beings However the

danger of love the intellectual rigor that is required to practice love and the uncertainty

of what love is ultimately leads Socrates to abandon his greatest practice and embrace

the comfort of false certainty that reason promises

Socrates for Nietzsche ends up as a confused person Socrates gives up his

magnificent practice of the art of love or at least more charitably simply miscalculates in

his practice and tries to find a more stable ground by forcing love to ascend to heights

that will make things knowable according to one particular ideal the good And yet

Socrates was still put to death for his practice of the art of love Socrates may have

pushed farther than anyone else in trying to live a life of love and in understanding what

love is but came up short But love is so dangerous when practiced so misunderstood by

convention so powerful that it forces recognition when displayed that Socrates puts his

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

41

reputation at stake by and ultimately pays with his life for practicing love And not just

in the sense of being persecuted by the body politic of Athens Socrates holds his own life

in his hands by practicing the art of love and wonders ldquoI dedicated my life to practicing

the art of love and persuading others to do this also yet wisdom has left me here with a

limp version of love replaced by the prosthetic of the good and for this I sit here with

my hemlock and wish death upon myself What a terrible and wonderful thing love must

berdquo

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

The Free Spirit

ldquoIndeed we philosophers and lsquofree spiritsrsquo feel when we

hear the news that lsquothe old god is deadrsquo as if a new dawn

shone on us our heart overflows with gratitude

amazement premonitions expectation At long last the

horizon appears free to us again even if it should not be

bright at long last our ships may venture out again venture

out to face any danger all the daring of the lover of

knowledge is permitted again the sea our sea lies open

again perhaps there has never yet been such an lsquoopen

searsquomdash (The Gay Science pg 281)

ldquoAll great problems demand great love and of that only

strong round secure spirits who have a firm grip on

themselves are capable It makes the most telling difference

whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his

problems and finds in them his destiny his distress and his

greatest happiness or an lsquoimpersonalrsquo one meaning that he

can do no better than to touch them and grasp them with the

antennae of cold curious thoughtrdquo (The Gay Science pg

283)

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

43

ldquoOnce a human being reaches the fundamental conviction

that he must be commanded he becomes lsquoa believerrsquo

Conversely one could conceive of such a pleasure and

power of self-determination such a freedom of the will that

the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for

certainty being practiced in maintaining himself on

insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near

abysses Such a spirit would be the free spirit par

excellencerdquo (The Gay Science pg 289-290)

In this last section I will attempt to give an account of what the free spirit might

be This will include a discussion of what I take to be the free spiritrsquos ultimate object of

affection life itself In doing this I will not necessarily be giving what I take to be

Nietzschersquos account of what a free spirit is Rather I will propose three necessary but

perhaps not sufficient criteria that I think Nietzsche may or may not agree with I will be

borrowing from Nietzsche and using his thoughts to guide my own I will briefly address

my reason for avoiding trying to place the free spirit as a consistent concept alongside the

will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch22 After an analysis of

what the free spirit might be I conclude with a definition of eros

What is the free spirit An invention Nietzsche says he created the idea of free

spirits because he ldquohellipneeded their companionship [hellip] in order to remain in good spirits

amid terrible things (sickness isolation foreignness acedia inactivity) as brave 22 In this paper I maintain that the free spirit cannot or should not be understood as part of a coherent whole in combination with the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

44

companions and ghosts with whom one can chatter and laugh when one wants to chatter

and laughrdquo (Human All Too Human 7) While Nietzsche claims to have invented the free

spirit it is obvious that the free spirit is if not modeled on Socrates (which very well may

be the case) then at least inspired by Socrates Nietzsche might have harsh words for

Socrates (calling him monster refers to how ugly Socrates is etc) but it is not because

Nietzsche disagrees with Socrates point for point it is because Socrates pushes Nietzsche

in ways that are terrifying Nietzsche describes philosophers in this very way in the world

of Ancient Greece ldquohellipthe philosopher is a comet incalculable and therefore terror-

inspiring When all is well he shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude in the

solar system of culturerdquo (Philosophy in the Tragic Age 34) When one is pushed to their

limit compelled to unrestrainedly pursue a life of love one realizes the superficiality and

emptiness of the life they once led Nietzschersquos thought is not a simple break from

Socratesrsquo thought it is more of a continuation Nietzsche has refined the practice of the

art of love that we find Socrates practicing The free spirit Nietzschersquos invention finds

its lineage in Socrates In that sense Socratesrsquo erotic desire did give birth to something

through his erotic practice of self-mastery Socrates inspired a freedom of living that

Nietzsche recognized as the core of what a healthy life might look like freedom of

expression freedom of onersquos thinking and freedom from convention and dogma And

most importantly the freedom that one lives through self-possession through loving life

itself one loves that which one has in abundance life

There is a certain straightforwardness to it the free spirit is one who is free from

all values that she has not created But underneath the straight forwardness is something

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

45

else a poetic undertone to the free spirit one that echoes uncertainty danger solitude

joy truth hellip a kind of love of life The free spirit as embodied in Socrates is a sliver of

Nietzschersquos free spirit Socrates loved in earnest and lived his life according to what he

loved Socrates loved wisdom but so much so that wisdom became more important than

life itself Instead the lsquogoodrsquo life became the object of Socratesrsquo love a life that was ruled

by reason and injected with a value that de-valued life itself For Socrates life was

subjected to the domain of reason instead of reason being subjected to life For Nietzsche

this was a form of decadence In trying to overcome the decadence of Athens through

reason elevating reason to a height above life became just another form of decadence

But even reason something that Nietzsche praised23 cannot be valued over and above life

itself To guide onersquos life by reason is to say that there is something higher in value than

life But if life is all we know all that we have how can we rightfully posit anything

above life to guide it to master it to tame it to understand it

ldquoJudgments value judgments concerning life for or

against can in the last resort never be true they possess

value only as symptoms they come into consideration only

as symptomsmdashin themselves such judgments are

23 Walter Kaufmann provides a good analysis of how Nietzsche thought of reason in his chapter lsquoSublimation Geist and Erosrsquo ldquoRationality on the other hand gives man mastery over himself and as the will to power is essentially the lsquoinstinct of freedomrsquo (GM II 18) it can find fulfillment only through rationality Reason is the lsquohighestrsquo manifestation of the will to power in the distinct sense that through rationality it can realize its objective most fullyhellip Reason is extolled not because it is the faculty that abstracts from the given forms universal concepts and draws inferences but because these skills enable it to develop foresight and to give consideration to all the impulses to organize their chaos to integrate them into a harmonymdashand thus to give man power power over himself and over nature Foresight and patience and above all lsquogreat self-masteryrsquo (which under un-favorable circumstances also makes possible dissimulation)mdashthat is according to Nietzsche of the very essence of Geist (G IX 14)rdquo (Nietzsche 230)

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

46

stupidities One must reach out and try to grasp this

astonishing finesse that the value of life cannot be

estimated Not by a living man because he is party to the

dispute indeed its object and not the judge of it not by a

dead one for another reasonrdquo (Twilight of the Idols pg 30)

Life is a value-less value the one thing that man cannot evaluate We are born

full of life and have life until death Life itself is not sensitive to our judgments to our

actions our fears our knowledge or our truths Our lives are susceptible to all these

things but life itself is indifferent Life cannot be judged it simply is The free spirit

loves life Does life itself have value While we cannot evaluate life itself or give life

itself value we do value life itself by loving it In this sense if one wishes to escape the

nihilistic systems of thought that love anything other than life the one thing that cannot

be given value is of the utmost value There is only one thing that is priceless invaluable

worthy of all our devotion and that is life itself Not reason not love not beauty but

rather life itself is what the free spirit loves When the free spirit loves life itself all the

other attributes of a life can be fulfilled That is all of the other values of a life can be

evaluated given value and used to live a life

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of philosophy since Socrates has been to try and

give life value All of religion would be guilty of the same mistake but simply performed

by other means In both cases by trying to evaluate and give life value philosophy and

religion end up valuing non-life or rather valuing the values that are mistakenly

attributed to life How are they mistaken How do we know that they are mistaken

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

47

Because life if it is simply that which is which we experience as our being is

imperceptible to our human capacities of cognition and sense Yes we can know we are

alive we can see touch taste hear and smell and from this we know that there is life

but life itself is impervious to any of our faculties We can know that there is life but we

cannot know life24 The fact that life cannot be known judged or evaluated would render

any attempts at valuing life absurd Instead we love the one thing we cannot know but at

the same time the one thing we cannot know is the most real thing we know to exist We

are proof of life We do not place value on the thing we love we love it for its inability to

be evaluated and its non-value giving nature Life itself does not give our lives value we

alone give our lives value but life itself is recognized as an un-governing principle of our

lives That is while Socrates sought out wisdom to provide a governing principle of life

(that principle being the good) Nietzsche gives us life itself as a principle that has no

mandates on how one ought to live How one ought to live is a decision for the

individual a self-possessed individual and for Nietzsche perhaps the only individual who

is really capable of making these kinds of decisions is one who is free spirited Let us

take an example of an attempt to place value on life itself God I think Nietzsche works

hard to show that this is not just a simple case of replacing God with life though because

of the impingement of religion on our thinking it may seem to be the case Instead it is a

reversal of what originally transpired when life was replaced with God that was the

simple move Nietzschersquos reconstruction of how that simple move took place is part of

the difficulty of following Nietzschersquos thinking Life cannot be evaluated but God can 24 Just to be clear I take that at this point in my analysis I am no longer interpreting Nietzsche but rather outlining how a free spirit might differ with the Nietzschean conception that life is will to power though Nietzsche heavily influences my thinking here

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

48

God is a creation a fabrication of those who sought to give life a value When life

confronts a thinker with its imperceptibility one can love it or create a value like God to

love instead God is not the only value that has been thought up to render life perceptible

Reason Nature Science Truth the list goes on This is not to say that these are bad

creations but they are incorrect in so far as one is talking about created values that

attempt to give life value When one loves life itself it is entirely possible that God

Reason Nature Science and Truth are all valuable things that contribute to the health of

a life However any time one tries to value life itself according to these principles one

will end up with a life that is unhealthy That is in order to have a chance at a life of

health one must first love life itself and then evaluate the values of a life on their own

merits according to the values created during a life instead of trying to evaluate values

against a single value that stands in for life itself

I have so far purposefully avoided any discussion of what I think are the three so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo that Nietzsche leaves us with and their relation to a discussion of the

free spirit the will to power the eternal return of the same and the Uumlbermensch First I

am limited by the constraints of space and time and second I am not sure that any of

these three lsquodoctrinesrsquo25 have any bearing on the free spirit (I will attempt to explain this

later) In his book Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche Laurence Cooper does not go

25 I want explain the scare-quotes here I do not mean to relegate these lsquodoctrinesrsquo as inconsequential in understanding Nietzschersquos philosophy On the contrary these three powerful concepts are nothing short of works of genius and it is a worthwhile pursuit to understand them if one wants to make any sense of Nietzschersquos writings I remain a bit skeptical about calling them doctrines myself but use the term for the ease that it provides in grouping the concepts together as key components of Nietzschersquos thought I am skeptical in calling them doctrines because I donrsquot think they apply universally to everything that Nietzsche has written eg the free spirit Though this just brings to light my own intuition (or suspicion) that a doctrine is a universal rule which I suppose is not necessarily the case

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

49

into great detail about the free spirit but does examine eros in contrast with the will to

power One line from this discussion is a parenthetical remark that Cooper makes within

his comparison of Platorsquos Republic and Nietzschersquos Beyond Good and Evil

In fact though Plato and the Republic are invoked even earlier in the

opening line of the preface lsquoSupposing truth is a womanmdashwhat thenrsquo

What is this but an invocation of philosophic eros a theme that figures so

prominently in the Republic Yet unlike the other reference to the

Republic this onemdashthis most important reference if indeed lsquothe

beginning is the most important part of every workrsquo (Republic 377a-b)mdash

expresses agreement with Plato both in positing the philosopher as a lover

and in indicating the primacy of a single psychic force (But shouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have opened not with eros but with will to powermdashunless

perhaps eros somehow is will to power hellip) (221)

This parenthetical remark I think is a theme in this paper brewing just underneath my

explanations of Nietzschean love I want to comment on this topic very briefly and very

carefully I think for Nietzsche love is a passionate drive that is not in conflict with

reason (as it is for Socrates) but rather both work in conjunction and act as expressions

of will to power I claim that the free spirit loves in a Nietzschean sense and the object of

the free spiritrsquos love is life itself If we take Nietzschersquos claim that ldquolife simply is will to

powerrdquo (Beyond Good and Evil 203) then the formulation is this the free spirit loves life

itself (which is a practice of self-possession) love is an expression of the will to power

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

50

but the will to power simply is life then the free spirit is expressing the will to power

(through practicing love) and loving the will to power through the will to power26

I want claim that the free spirit cannot be understood through the three lsquodoctrinesrsquo

of Nietzsche I realize this claim is sweeping and might be a gross misunderstanding of

Nietzschersquos work However what I am engaged in here is not an attempt to nail down the

specifics of Nietzschersquos positions but a working out of the weird position of the free

spirit within Nietzschersquos thought Namely how can a free spirit appearing after

Nietzschersquos writings be bound by something that Nietzsche has written Wouldnrsquot

Nietzsche have recognized that the free spirit whatever it is is also free from an

adherence to or agreement with the will to power or the eternal return of the same or the

Uumlbermensch These three teachings as I see it are a precursor to the free spirit not

doctrines that we as scholars are meant to force upon an understanding of the free spirit

Nietzsche formed an idea of the free spirit especially through his long philosophical

engagement with Socrates The basic tenets are these the free spirit is an erotic practices

self-possession through loving life itself and still clings to the Socratic honesty of

admitting when heshe does not know something Even when Nietzsche gets close to

saying that there will someday be an actualization of the free spirit he has invented he

questions himself as to how he has visualized their development ldquoThat such free spirits

could someday exist hellip I would be the very last person to doubt this I see them coming

already slowly slowly and I am perhaps doing something to hasten their coming if I

describe in advance the destinies from which I see them arising the paths on which I see

26 This may be well and good for understanding the will to power in Nietzsche but I do not think it helps us understand what the free spirit is

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

51

them comingmdash rdquo (Human All Too Human 7) Here Nietzsche shows us his uncertainty

about the free spirit He thinks the free spirit is coming and he thinks he is on the right

path himself in hastening their arrival by announcing and creating new paths on which to

take our thoughts But when it comes down to it Nietzsche will not draw a line in the

sand and say ldquoThis is when the free spirit will arrive this is how he will come and this is

what the free spirit isrdquo Though Nietzsche might get close to such declarations ultimately

we have Nietzsche providing us with reasonable insights as to what the free spirit could

be It is our task to question these insights that is what I take myself to be doing in this

project Now with Nietzschersquos analysis of the will to power we have claims to certainty

with which to pin Nietzsche down to a clearer position It is my suggestion that the free

spirit is a topic that avoids this kind of examination We cannot even appeal to

Nietzschersquos own texts to discover exactly what the free spirit is Instead using

Nietzschersquos texts as a guide we must allow our own thinking to develop on this topic

that is how Nietzsche has left it for us

The culmination of Nietzschersquos thought of Nietzschersquos thinking of everything

that he wrote is this idea of the free spirit The importance of tracing how or what

influenced the idea of the free spirit for Nietzsche is to try and understand what the free

spirit is I think that I have focused on the beginning influence on Nietzschersquos idea of the

free spirit I believe that it was Socrates and that Nietzsche found this free-spiritedness in

Socrates and developed it himself this idea of the free spirit that Nietzsche sets up as the

philosopher of the future The important thing to remember about the free spirit and one

of the reasons that I think it is the culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking is that it

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

52

exemplifies the duplicity that we find in Nietzsche Take the three so-called lsquodoctrinesrsquo

the will to power the eternal return and the Uumlbermensch these concepts might be

fixtures in Nietzschersquos thought and that is well and good but what we canrsquot do is make

the mistake of trying to have the free spirit be consistent with the things that Nietzsche

wrote and the things that we describe as Nietzschersquos thought because the free spirit is

the philosopher of the future (Beyond Good and Evil 53) Nietzsche is reaching out to the

future and saying ldquoThis is what a philosopher is it is a free spiritrdquo We must allow for

Nietzsche to contradict himself to give us lsquodoctrinesrsquo in his thought that donrsquot apply to

all that he thinks of Thatrsquos the key for me and one of the reasons that itrsquos the

culmination of Nietzschersquos thinking hersquos going beyond himself He is making room for

the transformation of his own thoughts in the hands of those who do not yet exist I think

it might not be too bold to think that Nietzsche did not want people to adopt the three

lsquodoctrinesrsquo Rather Nietzsche had this idea of the free spirit who is not beholden to the so-

called lsquodoctrinesrsquo of Nietzsche The free spirit does not need to exemplify the will to

power Nietzsche I think might very well accept this kind of thought that a free spirit

could reject maybe everything that Nietzsche wrote This is not a problem in trying to

understand the free spirit I think if you follow the line of Nietzschersquos thought this is

where it leads you it leads you away from Nietzsche to something new to something that

overcomes Nietzsche Using the title of his work Beyond Good and Evil in trying to

understand what his whole thinking is about it suggests ideas like ldquoBeyond the work of

Nietzscherdquo I think thatrsquos what the value of the idea of the free spirit is And when we

start tracing what we try to understand as the free spirit we start this natural progression

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

53

away from Nietzschersquos thought and his thinking (but of course just as we find so much

common ground between Nietzsche and Socrates so too we find as much closeness as

distance with Nietzsche and the free spirit) Thatrsquos the direction of the free spirit I think

I could be wrong Itrsquos a point that is at least worth considering and a point that I want to

put forth

Have I answered my own question what is the free spirit To repeat taking a cue

from Socrates and Nietzsche I feel comfortable saying the free spirit is at bottom a

lover Beyond that I also feel comfortable in saying that part of the practice of the art of

love is the act of becoming free or possessing oneself The last clause I would add is

what I call Socratic honesty admitting to not knowing something when one does not

know it I feel fairly confident in laying out these three clauses of what a free spirit is

only because I have seen them investigated in such care and detail in the thinking of both

Socrates and Nietzsche The key difference between the Socratic lover and the

Nietzschean as I see it (and as I believe Nietzsche sees it) is that Socratic love ends up

de-valuing both life itself by replacing it with a value of the good and this life the life

we actually live played out in Socratesrsquo death scene For Nietzsche one must be

extremely careful not to de-value life or even try to give life value In the end I cannot in

good conscience say that I have answered the question of what a free spirit is Despite

being led in my own thoughts by these two great thinkers I am left in a state of aporia

when it comes to determining what a free spirit is But in learning from Socrates and

Nietzsche I will offer one definition a definition of eros Eros is a passionate possession

of an abundance of uncertainty

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

54

Works Cited

Bloom Allan Love and Friendship New York Simon amp Schuster 1993

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

55

Cooper Laurence D Eros in Plato Rousseau and Nietzsche The Politics of Infinity

University Park Pennsylvania State University Press 2008

Foucault Michel ldquoPrison Talk Interview with J-J Brocierrdquo PowerKnowledge

Selected Interviews amp Other Writings Ed Colin Gordon New York Pantheon

(1980) 37-54

Kaufmann Walter Nietzsche Philosopher Psychologist Antichrist Princeton Princeton

University Press 1968

Nietzsche Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1989

--- The Birth of Tragedy Or Hellenism and Pessimism Trans Douglas Smith Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

--- Ecce Homo How One Becomes What One Is Trans Walter Kaufmann New York

Random House 1989

--- The Gay Science Trans Walter Kaufmann New York Random House 1974

--- Human All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits Trans Gary Handwerk Stanford

Stanford University Press 1995

--- On the Genealogy of Morality Trans Maudemarie Clark and Alan J Swensen

Indianapolis Hackett 1998

--- Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Trans Marianne Cowan Washington

DC Regnery 1962

--- Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for Everyone and No One Trans RJ Hollingdale

Middlesex Penguin 1969

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

56

--- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer Trans RJ

Hollingdale Middlesex Penguin 1968

Plato ldquoApologyrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 17-36

--- ldquoLachesrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Rosamond Kent Sprague

Indianapolis Hackett 1997 664-686

--- ldquoPhaedordquo Compete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans GMA Grube Indianapolis

Hackett 1997 49-100

--- ldquoSymposiumrdquo Complete Works Ed John M Cooper Trans Alexander Nehamas

and Paul Woodruff Indianapolis Hackett 1997 457-505

Bibliography

Books I Read That Were Not Cited

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

57

I Other Works by Nietzsche

II Works About Nietzsche

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

I Other Works by Nietzsche

Nietzsche Friedrich The Antichrist A Criticism of Christianity Trans Anthony M

Ludovici New York Barnes amp Noble 2006

--- Philosophy and Truth Selections from Nietzschersquos Notebooks of the Early 1870rsquos

Trans Daniel Breazeale Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press 1990

--- The Will To Power Trans Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale New York

Vintage Books 1968

II Works About Nietzsche

Deleuze Gilles Nietzsche amp Philosophy Trans Hugh Tomlinson New York Columbia

University Press 2006

Heidegger Martin Nietzsche The Eternal Recurrence of the Same Vol 2 Trans David

Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San Francisco Harper amp Row 1984

--- Nietzsche Nihilism Vol 4 Trans David Farrell Krell Ed David Farrell Krell San

Francisco Harper amp Row 1982

Loumlwith Karl Nietzschersquos Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same Trans J

Harvey Lomax Berkeley University of California Press 1997

Nehamas Alexander Nietzsche As Literature Cambridge Harvard University Press

1985

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986

58

Richardson John Nietzschersquos New Darwinism New York Oxford University Press

2004

Rosen Stanley The Mask of the Enlightenment Nietzschersquos Zarathustra 2nd ed New

Haven Yale University Press 2004

Salomeacute Lou Nietzsche Trans Siegfried Mandel Urbana University of Illinois Press

2001

III Works That Inspired Me In Thinking About Nietzsche

Emerson Ralph Waldo Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ed Stanley Appelbaum New

York Dover 1993

True Cynthia American Scream The Bill Hicks Story London Pan 2005

Vedder Eddie ldquoI Am Minerdquo Riot Act Perf Pearl Jam Epic 2002

Whitman Walt Leaves of Grass The First (1855) Edition Ed Malcolm Cowley New

York Penguin 1986