Narziss

Nietzsche's Psychology Course

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:03:00 -0800

UC Berkeley has a program called “decal” in which students, under the guidance of an advisor, are able to offer a one to two unit course that other students can enroll and take. I’ve previously offered a course on Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (you can view the page for it here) with R. Jay Wallace as the advisor. This semester, the course will be titled, “Nietzsche’s Psychology”, and it will look at Nietzsche’s psychological aphorisms and their philosophical implications (click here for its webpage).

Click here to view all my posts regarding the course: http://verhexung.com/tagged/nietzsche%27s-psychology

Surrealist Photography

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:51:33 -0800

Photos by Philip Cerda

Reflection and Impartiality

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:14:00 -0800

Click here to read the formatted pdf with footnotes: http://bit.ly/s4Cv8f.

1 — The Moral Point of View

Taking reflection as the moral point of view, I want to argue that reflection does not have the impartiality that certain moral philosophers take it to have. To begin, I want to look at the work of Thomas Nagel in his book The View from Nowhere and Christine Korsgaard in her book The Sources of Normativity. Both of them require a certain impartiality of reflection so that it can provide the sort of neutrality of perspective that is capable of assessing the legitimacy of entities that purport to be normative. Neutrality is required of reflection because reflection seeks to find reasons for action and values that are not just good for someone (i.e., preferences) but good in general (i.e., moral).

In discussing the ethical theories of these two philosophers, I want to focus on the way they describe reflection and on the role they give to reflection, so that I can launch a critique of their theories based on whether reflection works as they describe. My critique of their theories focuses on their described impartiality of reflection, and following Nietzsche’s critique against its impartiality, I want to argue both that Nagel fails to find a reliable procedure for assessing the objectivity of moral entities and that Korsgaard fails to find the impartiality that she requires of morality.

2 — The Reflective Point of View

As Nagel writes, “Objectivity is the central problem of ethics” (Nagel 1986: 138). The problem is that we must find a point of view that has the neutrality and impartiality capable of discerning what is objectively good. As I will argue in this section, both Nagel and Korsgaard believe that reflection provides the impartiality that is needed for the objectivity of ethics.

Nagel describes reflection as the “detached point of view toward ourselves and the world” (Nagel 1986: 138). What makes it detached? According to Kant, the detachment comes from the reflective point of view’s immunity from the determining influence of our inclinations:

[The will] can indeed be affected but not determined by impulses […]. Freedom of choice is this independence from being determined by sensible impulses. (Metaphysics of Morals 6:213-4)

Korsgaard too follows in this vein when she describes reflective deliberation as having the ability to suspend the determining effects of your desires and choose which ones to act on and which ones to ignore:

When you deliberate, it is as if there were something over and above all of your desires, something which is you, and which chooses which desire to act on. (Korsgaard 1996: 100)

Now this ability to suspend our desires, impulses, and inclinations has a certain eradicating power. In choosing which desire is a reason to act on, the various desires and inclinations have to survive the scrutiny of reflection. Some desires may be worth acting on, others may not:

The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason. Otherwise, at least as long as it reflects, it cannot commit itself or go forward. (Korsgaard 1996: 93)

Here we can see the role that reflection plays with its ability to suspend the determining effects of desires and inclinations. The role of reflection is to scrutinize our inclinations so that we can reveal upon which we have reason to act. In the following sections (2.1-3), I will examine how both Nagel and Korsgaard each employ reflection for finding which inclinations we have reason to act on.

2.1 — Nagel’s Moral Realism

Nagel himself is a substantive moral realist; that means that he believes that there are moral facts that exist independent of our reflection. Nagel believes that there is a procedure, namely, reflective deliberation, for tracking or discovering these independent moral facts. What we must do is move from the immediate point of view (“transcending the appearances”) and into the reflective point of view (“subjecting them to critical assessment”) (Nagel 1986: 139). In the move from the immediate to the reflective, the eradicating power of the reflective point of view comes in:

Some aspects of practical reason may prove to be irreducibly subjective, so that while their existence must be acknowledged from an objective standpoint their content cannot be understood except from a more particular perspective. But other reasons will irresistibly engage the objective will. (Nagel 1986: 149)

The eradicating power of reflection arises in that, in moving from the immediate to the reflective, some inclinations lose their traction on our will and no longer compel us to act, whereas other inclinations survive this scrutiny and come to be seen as objective reasons for action.

Nagel distinguishes inclinations that don’t survive reflective scrutiny from those that do by using the terms agent-relative and agent-neutral. Since reflection, according to Nagel, is detached and impartial, the inclinations that survive its scrutiny are those that share in its neutrality or impartiality. On the other hand, those reasons that can only be understood relative to the inclinations of a particular person will lack the impartiality to be objective reasons for action. Agent-relative reasons are reasons that are only compelling relative to the person, failing the scrutiny of reflection. Agent-neutral reasons are reasons that are compelling for anyone and survive the scrutiny of reflection.

Nagel defends his substantive moral realism by focusing on pleasure and pain as examples of entities that survive the scrutiny of reflection. His guiding question is: are pleasure and pain agent-relative or agent-neutral from the reflective point of view?

Nagel argues that pleasure and pain are objective reasons for action because they survive the scrutiny of impartiality. What we must understand is that Nagel claims to find normative authority from reflecting on pain and pleasure itself; that is, pain and pleasure carry the normative force necessary to make them reasons for action for the will of the reflective agent. Nagel takes their objectivity as good and bad to be self-evident. Stressing this conviction, he writes:

But the pain, though it comes attached to a person and his individual perspective, is just as clearly hateful to the objective self as to the subjective individual. (Nagel 1986: 160)

According to Nagel, pain is bad from the impartial perspective. His argument relies on the belief, which he takes to be self-evident, that pain is bad in itself, independent reflective scrutiny. Again, reflection is the procedure through which, according to Nagel, a person discovers the objectivity of pleasure and pain as reasons for action.

2.2 — Korsgaard vs. Nagel

Before introducing Korsgaard’s own response to where normative authority comes from, I’d like to summarize her philosophical criticisms against Nagel. As I have described in the prior section, Nagel believes that pleasure and pain carry their own normative force sufficient to survive the scrutiny of reflection, but he even admits, “In arguing for this claim, I am somewhat handicapped by the fact that I find it self-evident” (Nagel 1986: 159-160). So does reflection actually discover independent reasons for action (or is Nagel just claiming that it does)? Korsgaard disagrees with Nagel:

Nagel thinks we should take a closer look at the beliefs and motives themselves, to discover whether they are really reasons. But no such discovery is ever made. The realist’s belief in the existence of normative entities is not based on any discovery. It is based on his confidence that his beliefs and desires are normative. (Korsgaard 1996: 48)

Furthermore, even if we think that pain is bad, why should we be compelled to avoid it? That is, even if we believe that pain is objectively bad (or pleasure objectively good), we still need to give an account of where the authority comes from that tells us to act toward it in some way. As Korsgaard writes, “when the concept of the good is applied to a natural object, such as pleasure, we can still always ask whether we should really choose or pursue it” (Korsgaard 1996: 43).

We must now turn to Korsgaard to see if she can give us an adequate account of a way in which reflection can provide us normative authority.

2.3 — Korsgaard’s Moral Identity

When we find an objective reason for action, what this means is that some desire or inclination has survived reflection. For Korsgaard, surviving the scrutiny of reflection requires that the desire or inclination is endorsed, and it must be endorsed by the impartiality of reflection.

Realism fails to account for normative authority because it tries to explain a person’s endorsement of an entity by looking at the entity itself (e.g., pleasure or pain), but just because something is good or bad doesn’t tell us what authorizes us to act toward it in a particular way. For Korsgaard, there must be someone who authorizes or endorses the inclination as a reason for action.

Furthermore, reflection is not just a test for endorsing inclinations, but in Korsgaard’s ethical theory, reflection is also a test for discerning who is providing the endorsement and for finding the requisite impartiality in some endorsing agent. Korsgaard’s ultimate claim is that each of us provides the normative authority of endorsement when we are situated exclusively in the reflective point of view; that is, our identity as reflective agents provides the necessary impartial endorsement needed for providing reasons with objectivity.

From the reflective point of view, we ask, “what justifies taking inclinations as reasons for action?” The answer that Korsgaard wants to provide is endorsement. Endorsement involves surviving the scrutiny of impartial reflection and having traction for the objective will:

Each impulse as it offers itself to the will must pass a kind of test for normativity before we can adopt it as a reason for action. (Korsgaard 1996: 91).

When we reflectively endorse certain impulses or inclinations, we take them as reasons for actions. But where does this endorsement come from? Again, let’s recall Korsgaard’s formulation of reflective deliberation:

When you deliberate, it is as if there were something over and above all of our desires, something which is you, and which chooses which desire to act on. (Korsgaard 1996: 100)

What is important here is to notice her emphasis on “you” as the agent who “chooses which desire to act on” (ibid.). The endorsement that sees some inclinations as reasons for action and obligates us to ignore others comes from some particular identity. Korsgaard describes this as a practical identity under which you find certain actions worth undertaking. Furthermore, she takes this identity to be self-advocating in that it seeks to preserve its own integrity, compelling us to live up to its standards. The identity is self-advocating because, according to Korsgaard, we must have an identity to be a person, and thus without one, we wouldn’t be able to choose one way or another regarding an action.

Up to this point, we can already see that the effects of reflection are twofold:

Reflective distance from our impulses makes it both possible and necessary to decide which ones we will act on: it forces us to act for reasons. At the same time, and relatedly, it forces us to have a conception of our own identity, a conception which identifies us with the source of those reasons. (Korsgaard 1996: 113)

Reflection both suspends the determining influence of our impulses and requires that we take on a practical identity in order to have a criteria for acting one way or another regarding our inclinations:

It is necessary to have some conception of your practical identity, for without it you cannot have reasons to act. We endorse or reject our impulses by determining whether they are consistent with the ways in which we identify ourselves. Yet most of the self-conceptions which govern us are contingent. […] Because these conceptions are contingent, one or another of them may be shed. (Korsgaard 1996: 120)

Interestingly, the eradicating power of reflection reenters and has effects not only with dismissing inclinations that do not survive its impartiality but also with shedding identities. In exercising its impartiality, reflection leads us to shed our contingent identities in order to discover the necessary left over. What is necessary, Korsgaard takes it, is that you must have some practical identity:

What is not contingent is that you must be governed by some conception of your practical identity. For unless you are committed to some conception of your practical identity, you will lose your grip on yourself as having any reason to do one thing rather than another – and with it, your grip on yourself as having any reason to live and act at all. (Korsgaard 1996: 120-1)

Korsgaard is here providing a transcendental argument: an argument that shows the necessary preconditions for some phenomenon. You must have some identity that makes endorsement possible in the first place, and reflection must now deliberate in determining which of your practical identities is necessary for you to value anything at all. Korsgaard calls this necessary, practical identity your moral identity or your humanity:

It is because we are such animals that our practical identities are normative for us, and, once you see this, you must take this more fundamental identity, being such an animal, to be normative as well. You must value your own humanity if you are to value anything at all. (Korsgaard 1996: 123)

Since you cannot act without reasons and your humanity is the source of your reasons, you must value your own humanity if you are to act at all. (Korsgaard 1996: 123)

Only with a practical identity do we see things as valuable, and according to Korsgaard, the standpoint of humanity is the view from which we see things as valuable. But how does this identity provide normative force? According to Korsgaard, our human identity is responsible for endorsing or rejecting our other identities:

Our other practical identities depend for their normativity on the normativity of our human identity – on our own endorsement of our human need to be governed by such identities – and cannot withstand reflective scrutiny without it. We must value ourselves as human. (Korsgaard 1996: 125)

If we do not treat our humanity as a normative identity, none of our other identities can be normative, and then we can have no reasons to act at all. Moral identity is therefore inescapable. Second, and for that reason, moral identity exerts a kind of governing role over the other kinds. Practical conceptions of your identity which are fundamentally inconsistent with the value of humanity must be given up. (Korsgaard 1996: 129-30)

In these passages we see that normative authority comes from our human identity and its endorsing or rejecting of our contingent identities, which in turn either endorse inclinations as reasons for action or reject them.

Since our necessary identity, according to Korsgaard, is our identity as humans that value anything at all, the endorsement and rejection of our contingent identities happens on the basis of our humanity (or in Kantian terminology, on the basis of our being Citizens in the Kingdom of Ends). Thus this process of reflection is guided by the constraints of our membership as rational beings who agree to be impartial and treat each other as ends in themselves.

3 — Nietzsche on the Reflective Point of View

Now I would like to provide the the ground for a rejection of the ethical theories of Nagel and Korsgaard, in which reflection has been a crucial component. Nagel uses the detached impartiality of reflection in an attempt to discover the normative force in entities independent of this reflection, and Korsgaard uses the impartiality of reflection to explain the endorsement of inclinations as objective reasons for actions in terms of our humanity.

What both of these ethical theories depend on is the impartiality of reflection. Reflection must be able to suspend the determining effects of our motives in order to offer us the impartiality that moral objectivity requires of us. However, if reflection is actually unable to suspend the influence of our inclinations, its impartiality and hence its moral objectivity would be at stake, and this is exactly what I want to argue, following Nietzsche, that reflection does not suspend the effects of our inclinations. Furthermore, I want to show (in sections 3.1-3) the severely damaging effects that this claim, if true, would have for both Korsgaard and Nagel.

Beyond Good and Evil, provides some textual evidence showing that Nietzsche held a suspicion against the impartiality of reflection. Nietzsche claims that though reflection may appear impartial to the moral philosopher himself, it is actually determined by certain inclinations. Nietzsche describes these determining effects in writing that “[Reflection] is secretly directed and forced into determinate channels by the instincts” (BGE 3). Because of this hidden determination, Nietzsche claims that, “The will to overcome an affect is, in the end, itself only the will of another, or several other, affects” (BGE 117). That is, when we reject an inclination, this rejection just comes from some other inclination.

This process of reflective deliberation is described in detail in Dawn (a book subtitled appropriately: “Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality”), which bears quoting at length:

[T]hat one wants to combat the vehemence of a drive in the first place is not in our control at all, no matter which method one falls back on, no matter whether one is successful or not. On the contrary, in this whole process our intellect is manifestly only the blind tool of another drive that is the rival of the one tormenting us with its vehemence […]. Whereas “we” believe ourselves to be complaining about the vehemence of a drive, it is, at bottom, one drive that is complaining about another: in other words: any time we perceive such vehemence in suffering, we can be sure that there exists another equally, if not more vehement drive and that a battle is in store in which our intellect will have to take sides. (D 109)

In this passage, Nietzsche makes clear that in reflection “‘we’ believe ourselves to be complaining about the vehemence of a drive”, when what is actually happening is that our reflection is being guided by some concealed drive (a drive that stands in authority of the reflecting intellect) that is complaining about the vehement drive (ibid.). But what is the argument for this claim?

I’d like to personally argue for Nietzsche’s view by scrutinizing why we step into the reflective point of view. According to Korsgaard, reflection makes normative authority a problem, but if this is so, then why do we enter into reflective deliberation? Why do we ask for justification for our inclinations? If reflection itself is what makes us question our inclinations, as Korsgaard believes, then we have no reason to enter into reflective deliberation in the first place! But because we do reflect, there must have been something else that motivated us to reflect, something that precedes reflective deliberation. And if there was something besides reflection that motivated us to reflect, then reflection is guided, not by impartiality, but by something other than itself!

And where Korsgaard fails to account for this motivation, Nietzsche succeeds. Nietzsche’s solution to the question about what motivates us to move from the immediate to the reflective point of view (and ask whether we endorse an inclination) is tied to his psychology. I believe that Nietzsche’s would respond that, when we reflect, some drive wants to assert its authority over some other, vehement drive. When we reflect, the drive in authority checks whether the vehement drive is influencing the person in the correct way. If the vehement drive is a means to the end of the drive in authority, then the drive in authority will endorse the vehement drive. If the vehement drive goes against the end of the drive in authority, then the drive in authority will seek a means to either weaken the vehement drive (via, e.g., repression) or turn it into a means for its own end (via, e.g., sublimation).

3.1 — Nietzsche vs. Korsgaard

Now if reflection doesn’t possess the detached impartiality (that came from its capacity to suspend inclinations) that Nagel and Korsgaard require of it (as I have argued above that it doesn’t), then there will be some severe problems for their claim to objectivity. For Korsgaard the issue lies in the suspending power of reflection, while for Nagel there is an epistemic problem.

Again, Korsgaard, like Kant, believes that reflection suspends inclinations, which Kant describes as “independence from being determined by sensible impulses” (Metaphysics of Morals 6:213-4) and which Korsgaard too describes as a process in which you stand “over and above all of your desires” (Korsgaard 1996: 100). However, as I have argued in the prior section, reflection is not impartial because it motivated and guided by your inclinations.

Lacking its impartiality, reflection loses its claim to objectivity. Furthermore, while I may agree with Korsgaard’s transcendental argument which argued that some practical identity must be necessary for giving rise to the possibility of valuing and endorsing, her conclusion that this identity is your humanity (with all the moral connotations that carries) is suspect, especially since reflection played a role in selecting our human identity as the necessary one. But while the issue for Korsgaard lies exclusively in the requisite impartiality of reflection, the issue is different for Nagel.

3.2 — Nagel’s Objectivity

For Nagel, the crucial thing is that reflection discovers objective moral facts, which are out there, independent of reflection. But although Nagel may be wrong in believing that reflection is impartial and capable of discovering these moral facts, the objectivity of the moral facts doesn’t depend on the impartiality of reflection. Pleasure and pain, for example, carry normative force independent of a person’s reflection on them. As Nagel writes:

I do not assume that the correct answer is just whatever will result from consistent application of deliberative methods—even assuming perfect information about the facts. In deliberation we are trying to arrive at conclusions that are correct in virtue of something independent of our arriving at them. (Nagel 1986: 149)

Here we see Nagel explaining that reflection doesn’t provide us the answer to the problem of normative authority; reflection will find the answer because normative force is objective. But here there is a skeptical worry: if our inclinations affect our reflection, and if reflection is unable to suspend their effects, those inclinations might make us see entities as having normative force even if they do not. Nevertheless, ignoring this objection, what I’d like to show is that even if Nagel could defend the objectivity of reasons (which I believe he can’t), we can nevertheless object to Nagel (using the Nietzschean argument against the impartiality of reflection) on epistemic grounds: that reflection is incapable of providing us with accurate, impartial knowledge of moral facts.

3.3 — Nietzsche vs. Nagel

Even if Nagel is right that pleasure and pain are good and bad independently of reflection, there is still an epistemic problem, and that is because Nagel depends on the impartiality of reflection for accurately discovering and discerning moral facts (facts like whether or not pleasure and pain are good or bad). Thus what the moral realist is after is an instrument for accurately finding these moral facts, and Nagel takes that instrument to be reflection. However, the accuracy of reflection is dependent on its detachment from our inclinations. Again, Nagel describes reflection as the “detached point of view toward ourselves and the world” (Nagel 1986: 138). But as we have seen, reflection lacks this impartiality because it is “secretly directed and forced into determinate channels by the instincts” (BGE 3), the very inclinations we were trying to detach ourselves from.

So although the objectivity of morality may be independent of reflection, the accurate discovery of objective moral facts is dependent on the impartiality of reflection, which Nietzsche claims we lack. Without this impartiality, we have an epistemic problem in that we cannot discern which moral facts are true independently of us and which are merely true in virtue of our inclinations making us believe that they are. Moving from the immediate point of view to the reflective point of view was supposed to solve this problem, but not if the reflective point of view isn’t detached from the inclinations it rises up to judge. Thus Nietzsche’s claim about reflection is a fatality for Nagel’s theory.

4 — Conclusion

I began by examining the role of reflection in the ethical theories of Nagel and Korsgaard in order to draw out the importance of its purported impartiality for the objectivity of their theories. Ultimately, I disagreed with both theories citing Nietzschean grounds on which the impartiality of reflection is brought into question. Instead, taking a Nietzschean approach, I believe that because we are each constituted by a hierarchy of drives, a political hierarchy that constitutes our self (BGE 12), when the stability of the self is challenged by some vehement drive, the person reflects on whether or not that vehement drive serves his purposes. Because reflection is motivated and guided by this purpose, it cannot have the crucial impartiality that Nagel and Korsgaard take it to have, for which it was to provide them their moral objectivity.

Virtual Reading Group on Nietzsche

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:29 -0700

I’ve created a new website devoted to the discussion of Nietzsche’s texts.

The website will be conducted as a virtual reading group, where we’ll work through each of Nietzsche’s books at a rate of approximately one aphorism per day (or four shorter maxims a day).

I’ve chosen to begin with the text of Twilight of the Idols, and I warmly invite other interested readers to comment on the reading by visiting the comment box at the bottom of each aphorism’s page (which can be visited by clicking “read more” or by clicking on the title of the relevant aphorism).

Click here for a brief introduction to Twilight of the Idols. After Twilight, I plan on having us read Dawn, followed by On the Genealogy of Morality and The Antichrist.

The website for the reading group is: http://verhexung.com

Nietzsche on Agency and the Will

Mon, 23 May 2011 02:49:00 -0700

Here is the problem: there are several passages in Nietzsche that make it seem as though agency is an illusion and has no causal force whatsoever. However, many philosophers of action would be at threat if this were true, since you need an agent in order to have genuine actions (as opposed to mere happenings). Although the passages that I will discuss from Nietzsche bring our conception of agency and personal volition into question, I believe that they do not have to be read as arguing that agency is an epiphenomenon; they do not have to be read as saying that the will is a mere illusion without causal force. Instead, I believe that Nietzsche has a positive conception of both agency and the will. I believe he must have a robust picture of agency in order to believe that a re-evaluation of values is possible. Without an agent that can operate with values and reasons for acting, a re-evaluation of those values would be futile.

In this article, I seek to show that Nietzsche has a conception of agency with causal efficacy. Toward this end, I will begin my article by (I) quoting several passages in Nietzsche that appear to be advocating that agency is an illusion and that the will is causally ineffective. Then I will (II) argue that what Nietzsche wants to do is offer a weaker (yet more sophisticated) conception of agency. Next, I will (III) re-examine those passages (from section I) in a broader context to show how they should actually be read as advocating the opposite of their initial, superficial reading. I will re-examine them to show that Nietzsche believes agency exists and that the will is causally effective. I argue that instead of dismissing agency and the will, all Nietzsche is trying to do in those passages is advise us with a few qualifications (e.g., the subject exists, but not a neutral subject; the will is causal, but not causa sui). Finally, I will (IV) give some direct textual evidence for Nietzsche’s belief in agency and the causality of the will.

I — Agency is an Illusion; the Will is Epiphenomenal

At this point, I’d simply like to set the opposition; I’d like to reveal the main passages that can be used to vindicate the view that Nietzsche believes that agency is an illusion and that the will is epiphenomenal. The first passage is an aphorism titled, “What is willing!” from Daybreak:

We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of its room, and then says, ‘I will that the sun shall rise’; and at him who cannot stop a wheel, and says: ‘I will that it shall roll’; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling, and says: ‘here I lie, but I will lie here!’ But, all laugher aside, are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression: ‘I will’? (D 124)

So in this passage we see Nietzsche giving us an account of someone mistakenly believing that inevitable events occurring apart from him are somehow the result of his will. And then Nietzsche startles us with a rhetorical question: is it that different when we claim to have willed an action? This rhetorical question seems to imply that we are just as deluded as the person who believes that they caused the sun to rise when we believe that we have caused an action.

Next, we have another passage, this one from a later work, where Nietzsche seems to state that our will is causally ineffective:

[We mistakingly] believe[ ] that our acts of will [are] causally efficacious; [we were mistaken when] we thought that here, at least, we had caught causality in the act. (TI VI: 2)

In this passage, we see Nietzsche questioning the causal efficacy of our conscious acts. Such an apparent negative criticism of agency and the will would not seem to bode well for prospects of an alternate reading.

Finally, we have a passage where Nietzsche seems to dismiss the whole picture of agency. Here Nietzsche outright says that there is no “doer” (or agent) behind the “deed” (or action):

[T]here is no “being” behind the doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is simply fabricated into the doing—the doing is everything. (GM III: 13)

This passage seems to say, surprisingly, that there is no agent—the agent is a mere fabrication. All we have is the action or “the doing”. This is strikingly problematic since under many models of action (in the philosophy of action), you can’t have an action without an agent to which to ascribe the action (otherwise you just have a mere happening). Unless we are able to read Nietzsche’s text as giving us a picture of unreflective action, we need to somehow salvage some picture of agency in order to have genuine action (and not mere behaviors or happenings).

II — The prospect of a Revisionary account of Agency and the Will

In this section, I’d like to take a second look at several passages that offer a glimpse of Nietzsche’s revisionary account of agency and the will. First of all, I don’t believe Nietzsche wants to outright dismiss agency and the will. On the contrary, I believe Nietzsche wants to develop a positive picture of agency and its causality. Instead of dismissing agency, the passages that we will examine offer the prospect of a revisionary account, a revisionary account with some limitations and qualifications on agency.

When I say that Nietzsche accepts a picture of agency with some qualifications, what I mean to say is that Nietzsche does not outright dismiss agency but rather concedes to a weaker conception of agency. His criticisms are therefore revisionary. According to Nietzsche, it would be mistaken to believe that we possessed full fledged agency (that agency is causally autonomous), but I believe he accepts a weaker picture of agency where an agent acts but is not the sole cause of action.

When we look at passage 19 of Beyond Good and Evil, we see that Nietzsche provides us with an analysis of the constitution of the will as a revisionary account. He provides this revisionary account against Schopenhauer and other philosophers who thought that the will was a kind of entity of its own. Nietzsche tells us that the will is not a sui generis psychic entity but is rather a top-level psychological phenomena composed of thought, feelings, and drive affect. So here we see Nietzsche not outright dismissing the will, but rather, replacing a misunderstanding of the will with a qualified and limited conception of the will—in this case, a will that is constituted.

In another passage of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche criticizes our belief in the Christian “atomism of the soul” only to turn around and qualify that the concept of the soul needn’t be outright dismissed but should be merely revised. Nietzsche believes the “soul hypothesis” could persist under stricter limitations:

But the path lies open for new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis – and concepts like the “mortal soul” and the “soul as subject-multiplicity” and the “soul as a society constructed out of drives and affects” want henceforth to have civil right in the realm of science. (BGE 12)

Lastly, we have a second passage where Nietzsche questions our overestimation consciousness. Our mistake is thinking that consciousness is the sufficient and necessary condition for agency. However, like the above passage where Nietzsche accepts the “soul” under certain qualifications, Nietzsche also holds on to an understanding of consciousness, albeit a much weaker version:

One thinks it [consciousness] consists the kernel of man, what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, most original in him! […] This ridiculous overestimation and misapprehension of consciousness has the very useful consequence that an all-too-rapid development of consciousness was prevented. (GS 11)

So the first idea in the last two passages from which I quoted (BGE 12 & GS 11) is that agency has been erroneously described in a way in which it seems essential to man and separate from the causal realm. The second idea is we should not necessarily dismiss the “soul hypothesis” or “consciousness” but instead hold on to a more modest, weaker conception of these terms as part of agency (which is actually part of a complex picture of agency).

Let me show you a shorter passage where we see these two ideas: the error followed by the qualification. Nietzsche says, “[Consciousness] is not the directing agent, but an organ of the directing agent” (WP 524). The first idea is that we are mistaken in erroneously describing consciousness as the directing agent; the second idea (the qualification) is that we should question the picture of agency qua consciousness in order to instead see consciousness as a part of a more complex picture of agency.

What is interesting in all these passages is that Nietzsche is not outright dismissing agency but is instead providing us with a revisionary account. The soul has been misdescribed as being separate from the causal flux, when it is actually part of it. Agency has been misdescribed as being constituted by consciousness alone, when in fact consciousness is only a part of agency.

III — Reexamining the Problematic Passages

In this section, I’d like to take a second look at the passages from the prior section (I) where the three quotes were provided in order to vindicate the view that agency is an illusion and the will is epiphenomenal. My goal is to reexamine the passages in order to argue for the claim that these passages do not have to be read as avowing the dismissal of agency and causality of the will. On the contrary, I believe Nietzsche wants to develop a positive picture of agency and its causality. I will argue that a careful rereading of these passages reveals that Nietzsche merely wants to apply some limitations and qualifications to our mistaken commonsensical understanding of the terms “agency” and “will”. We have already seen Nietzsche’s tendency to follow certain criticisms with qualifications in order to preserve a weaker conception of the term. With these qualifications applied to the original three passages, we will finally see Nietzsche’s model of agency where an agent does act, and the agent contributes to her action because his will is causally efficacious.

The first passage presented an analogy between absurd cases like an individual believing that they willed a sunrise and more modest cases where someone uses the phrase “I will” (e.g. “I will” an action) (D 124). Brian Leiter comments on this passage saying, “If it is really true that this analogy holds, then it follows that the experience of willing which precedes an action does not track an actual causal relationship: the experience of willing is epiphenomenal […] with respect to the action” (Leiter 2007: 2). However, I don’t believe Nietzsche is merely leaping from one strong claim to another: he is not jumping from the positive strong claim, “the will is the sole cause of action,” to the negative strong claim, “the will stands in no causal relation with respect to action”. Rather, I believe Nietzsche is only telling us that we are mistaken in believing that the will, as a separate, autonomous essence, influences action. Nevertheless, the will does factor into the etiology of an action. It is okay to believe in this causal influence of the will when we understand the will as causally constrained, causally constrained because it is composed of thought, feelings, and affect (BGE 19).

So it seems that although there is no free, autonomous will apart from the natural, causal order, there is still a will. In this sense, what the analogy means is that believing that you willed a sunrise (whose true causes lie instead in the natural order) is not very different than believing that you willed an action (whose causes also lie in the natural order). What I believe Nietzsche is actually trying to tell us is that these two scenarios are not that different because both the causes of your action and the causes of the sunrise arise from the natural world.

With respect to clarifying the first passage’s naturalistic notion of agency and will, two further quotes come to mind:

First, we must understand how rare Nietzsche thinks a personal action is. Nietzsche says, “nothing is rarer than a personal action. A class, a rank, an environment, an accident—everything expresses itself sooner in a work or a deed, than a ‘person’” (WP 886). Here he is saying that authentic agency is incredibly (perhaps impossibly) rare. So even if a will appears, this is a will that is constrained by the person’s (adopted) values and their drives.

Second, we must understand that Nietzsche dismisses both the concept of “free will” and the concept of an “un-free will”. In Beyond Good and Evil 21, Nietzsche says that it is not that we should be contemplating which is correct between the “free” and “un-free will”. Instead, he says, “in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills” (BGE 21). If Nietzsche really believed that the will was epiphenomenal, then he would concede to belief in the “un-free will”. However, since he also refuses the un-free will, it shows that Nietzsche still believes that the will can factor into the etiology of an action. Again, this will that we factor in is a will that is constrained by the natural world.

The second passage we are reexamining reads, we mistakingly “believe[ ] that our acts of will [are] causally efficacious”; we were mistaken when “we thought that here, at least, we had caught causality in the act” (TI VI: 2).

Prima facie, this passage seems to dismiss the causal efficacy of consciousness. In context, I will argue, this passage only scrutinizes the belief that consciousness is the sole or primary cause of action (or that the will is causa sui). As Nietzsche says in the same passage, “Nobody doubted that consciousness was the place to look for all the antecedentia of an act” (ibid.). From this line, I believe we can understand that what Nietzsche is actually scrutinizing is the belief that consciousness contains the antecedentia or primary causes of an act. He doesn’t dismiss the efficacy of the will; he dismisses the idea that actions begin in the will.

In this way, I believe Nietzsche still leaves open the possibility of accepting a picture of the will as secondary cause, where the will factors into the etiology of an action but is not the primary cause. And as we have seen from BGE 19, if the will is itself composed of thought, feelings, and affect, it seems that the values of our culture and our own drives provide the conceptual and affective context for our willing. In this sense, our will would be second in the etiology of an action, second to something like historical conditioning, our character, biology, and our drives. This further vindicates the crux of my argument that none of this rules out the causal influence of the will in the etiology of action.

The third passage we originally discussed brings the notion of a subject or agent into question. In this aphorism, Nietzsche seems to dismiss agency by saying:

[T]here is no “being” behind the doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is simply fabricated into the doing—the doing is everything. (GM III: 13)

However, the context of this passage can change its meaning. This above passage is preceded by the following sentence:

[P]opular morality also separates strength from the expressions of strength as if there were behind the strong an indifferent substratum that is free to express strength—or not to. (GM III: 13; emphasis mine)

The difference is that with this added sentence, the subject of Nietzsche’s critique is shifted. It is not that there is no “doer” or “substratum” but rather that there is no “indifferent substratum” or “neutral doer” (GM III: 13; emphasis mine).

In the greater context of the Genealogy, I understand Nietzsche as questioning the doer-deed relationship for the purpose of illuminating his claim that the reactive slaves rely on an error for holding the active master responsible for his action. The error is the belief in a neutral subject, as if the master was somehow able to choose to act otherwise. The master is strong; the master’s subject cannot be separated from his drives that compel him to act on his strength. Since the doer is inextricably tied to the quality of a deed or action, a neutral “doer” cannot be separated out from the effecting of an action. So if the “doer” is strong, he cannot help but act strong. If the “doer” is weak, there is no way that he could choose to act strong.

Thus we see, in this rereading of the passages, how it would be a mistake to read them as vindicating the view that Nietzsche believes agency is an illusion and the will is epiphenomenal. Instead, these passages paint us a portrait of much weaker conceptions of agency and the will, conceptions limited by subtle qualifications.

Foremost, what we learn from Nietzsche is that the will is not a separate essence but inheres in the causal flux of thought, feeling, and affect. Finally, we learn that the qualities of the agent’s actions are inextricably tied to the qualities of an agent (e.g. strong actions arise from strong agents, weak actions arise from weak agents).

IV — Textual Evidence for Agency and Causality of the Will

In this last argumentative section, I’d like to discuss some textual evidence to further solidify the view of a positive conception of agency in Nietzsche (with a will that factors into the etiology of action). The first passage draws on the importance of interpretation and re-evaluation, the second passage focuses on the influence of consciousness (in virtue of values), and the third passage supports the second passage by discussing the influence of conscious ideas.

The collected notes that were arranged and published by Nietzsche’s sister under the heading The Will to Power, begin with this fascinating passage:

Point of departure: it is an error to consider “social distress” or “physiological degeneration” or, worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism. […] Distress, whether of the soul, body, or intellect, cannot of itself give birth to nihilism[…]. Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Rather: it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is rooted” (WP 1).

The passage is fascinating because it draws emphasis away from a potentially biological explanation of the “cause” of nihilism (this sort of explanation is a temptation of a strong naturalist reading of Nietzsche). These bio-psychological factors (i.e. “social distress”, “physiological degeneration”, “corruption”) may have provided the pre-conditions for nihilism, but according to Nietzsche, they cannot by themselves account for “giv[ing] birth to nihilism” (WP 1). The true condition of nihilism, according to Nietzsche, is a particular type of interpretation, namely, the “Christian-moral one” (ibid.).

What is relevant about this passage for this essay is that we notice interpretation as having a causal force for giving rise to nihilism. Presumably, interpretation is something that consciousness grapples with, and here we see it effecting on the individual. Thus, we see a picture of agency where consciousness, a part of agency, has an impact on the rest of the individual. In fact, this influence of our conscious ideas must be fairly significant because in the next passage, a passage from the work Ecce Homo, we see Nietzsche warning us about holding “great imperatives” in our conscious mind. He writes:

The whole surface of consciousness – consciousness is a surface – has to be kept free from all of the great imperatives. (EH II: 9)

This passage indicates that values can have an influence on us. He goes so far as to warn us against keeping some of these thoughts in our mind. Further, ideas can also have an influence, as the next passage describes an individual “locked up inside all sorts of horrible ideas” (TI VII: 2; emphasis mine):

[H]e was stuck in a cage, locked up inside all sorts of horrible ideas … There he lay, sick, miserable, full of malice against himself. (TI VII: 2)

And since thought can be part of willing, this claim about the effect of “ideas” further reinforces the argument that willing has a causal role, albeit as a secondary cause.

These three passages, taken together with the previous discussion, paint a complex picture of agency (that includes both consciousness and non-conscious drives and) that operates through a notion of willing that is not separate from the causal order. The passages solidify a reading of Nietzsche as someone who offers a revisionary critique of agency and the will (and not as someone who dismisses them altogether).

V — Conclusion

I have begun with three passages that seem, at first sight, to vindicate the view that agency is an illusion and the will is both epiphenomenal and causally ineffective. I then provided examples that show Nietzsche’s tendency to criticize a thesis but then keep the thesis alive in a re-interpreted form. I then took a second look at the original three passages in order to show how they can be read as part of a revisionary account of agency and the will. Finally, I ended with some passages from Nietzsche that show him deeply concerned with the crucial role that agency plays in his philosophy.

Without agency, a re-evaluation of values would be impossible. If our whole life was biologically determined, then the whole dance of values would be a bizarre illusion. However, Nietzsche realizes the influence of the will, whether strong or weak. What Nietzsche is showing us is how vital agency is to his re-evaluation of values. Agency can act; it can will. The picture of agency Nietzsche leaves us with is much more sophisticated and philosophically interesting than either the idea of an unconstrained, free will or an illusory un-free will.

Audio & Visual Media

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 02:16:00 -0700

Audio:

Nietzsche on Morality (Christopher Janaway)
Philosophy Bites published this podcast in which Janaway discusses the role of guilt in On the Genealogy of Morality.

Nietzsche’s Myths (Brian Leiter)
Philosophy Bites published this podcast in which Leiter dispels myths about Nietzsche. This is an excellent podcast for someone getting introduced to Nietzsche’s ideas.

Nietzsche on Morality (Brian Leiter)
Elucidations published this podcast in which Leiter discusses the scope of Nietzsche’s critique on morality.

Nietzsche on Freedom (Brian Leiter)
Oxford University published this podcast in which Leiter discusses his article, “Who is the Sovereign Individual? Nietzsche on Freedom”.

Nietzsche’s Value Monism (John Richardson)
Oxford University published this podcast in which Richardson, in the spirit of the conference’s theme: Nietzsche on Mind & Nature, discusses the merger of mind and nature in Nietzsche’s value monism.

Nietzsche on Art & Truth (Aaron Ridley)
Philosophy Bites published this podcast is which Ridley discusses the role of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in Nietzsche’s earlier philosophy and the metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological implications of these two concepts.

Nietzsche’s Metaphysics (Galen Strawson)
Oxford University published this podcast in which Strawson lays out the metaphysical assumptions in Nietzsche’s writings.

Schopenhauer (incl. Janaway)
In Our Time published this podcast in which Janaway, Grayling, and Han-Pile collaborate on explaining the basics of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in The World as Will and Representation.

Video:

Nietzsche on Mind & Nature (incl. Leiter, Richardson, Reginster)

Nietzsche's Theory of the Will

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 21:59:00 -0800

Among Brian Leiter’s essays, the one that has generated the greatest amount of productive discourse is probably “Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will” (in addition, his essay “Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Action” is basically a shorter version of this essay). “Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will” is an important essay in the study of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, philosophical psychology, and his philosophy of mind and action. My goal in this article is to summarize this important essay and to explain my reasons for why I believe the reading Leiter presents is mistaken.

Leiter argues that Nietzsche’s task in BGE 19, a task supported by the surrounding aphorisms, is to show how willing is causally ineffective. Leiter adds an additional qualification: even if the will does have some causal force, it is at least “not causally connected in a way that would underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility” (2).

According to Leiter, Nietzsche believes that either the will is epiphenomenal and is “casually inert with respect to [] action” (i.e., token-epiphenomenalism) or the will is “casually effective only in virtue of other type-facts about the person” (i.e., type-epiphenomenalism) (11). (Type-facts “are either physiological facts about the person or facts about the person’s unconscious drives or affects” (7).) However, even if the will is “casually effective […] in virtue of other type-facts about the person” (11), Leiter believes that the will is “not causally connected in a way that would underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility” (2; emphasis mine). The following figure shows token-epiphenomenalism (or simply, epiphenomenalism) on the left and type-epiphenomenalism (or will as secondary cause) on the right:

α — deep cause / drives
β — will / consciousness / thought
γ — action

Not only do I believe that Leiter’s stronger argument (token-epiphenomenalism) is an untenable reading of BGE 19, I also believe that his weaker argument (type-epiphenomenalism) is not sufficient to “underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility”. I personally believe Nietzsche has something else in mind when he presents us with BGE 19 (an aphorism mirrored by the unpublished version: 38[8] of his Late Notebooks; click here to see the two aphorisms); Nietzsche does not want to make us believe that willing is causally ineffective; rather, he wants to present us with an analysis of willing so that we understand how it is tied to our nonconscious drives. I will now describe the problems with Leiter’s essay as I go through a summary.

Leiter’s essay takes on the following three tasks:

I. The Phenomenology of Willing an Action:
Describe Nietzsche’s phenomenological account of “willing” an action; that is, describe what occurs in a conscious, first-person experience during the process of experiencing yourself as the cause of an action. (According to Leiter, the experience occurs in such a way that the agent is led to erroneously believe that he caused the action.)

II. The Experiences connected to Willing an Action are not causally connected to the resulting Action:
Explain Nietzsche’s argument for why the experience in “I. The Phenomenology of Willing” does not track a real causal relationship between the agent and the action.

III. The Account of the Actual Causal Genesis of an Action:
If the will isn’t the causal source of actions, then explain what is actually the deeper cause of actions.

Now I will deal with each task in turn (though, for sake of clarity, I will deal with the second and third tasks together):

I. The Phenomenology of Willing an Action:

In analyzing the will (in BGE 19), Nietzsche provides these three components as constituting our willing:

(i) “a plurality of feelings”
(ii) “a commandeering thought” and
(iii) “the affect of the command” (BGE 19).

Leiter’s phenomenology of willing translates these parts into:

(i’) “the bodily feelings”
(ii’) “the commandeering thought” and
(iii’) an emotion that compels both your personal identification with (ii’) and your belief that (ii’) caused both (i’) and the resultant action (3).

Although I would disagree with how Leiter condenses and simplifies (i) into (i’), I believe the biggest problem is in how Leiter translates (iii) into (iii’). He says,

[T]he bodily feelings and the commandeering thought are still not enough, according to Nietzsche, for the experience of willing. This is perhaps Nietzsche’s key claim. For the experience of willing is, according to Nietzsche, essentially the meta-feeling – the “affect” Nietzsche calls it – of commanding. “Affect” is not being used here in its Freudian sense of psychic energy or “charge” but as something closer to feeling again. By the “affect of the command”, Nietzsche means the feeling that the thought [ii’] […] brings about these other bodily feelings [i’] […] and that this commanding is who I am. (3)

Although Nietzsche certainly includes a passage that discusses an agent’s attributing the success of an action solely to himself (because it increases the “feeling of power”), I don’t believe that has anything to do with how Nietzsche uses “affect” here.

I actually think that what Nietzsche has in mind here (iii) is exactly that: something similar to a “Freudian sense of psychic energy or ‘charge’” (3). The “affect of command” is for Nietzsche a sort of psychic energy produced by the drive(s) in authority that drive us to act. But if “affect” is equal to a drive’s psychic charge, then the analysis or “phenomenology of willing” reveals a causal component! (Albeit not one that originates in the will but that is part of the will.) This would be an unsurmountable problem for Leiter’s stronger reading, since he wants to show that the experience of willing misleads us into thinking our will has causal force. Leiter has to read “affect” as meaning “the feeling that the thought [ii’] […] brings about these other bodily feelings [i’] […] and that this commanding is who I am” (3) or else his phenomenology can’t proceed.

I believe that what Nietzsche is actually trying to say is that if we experience willing as our own, independent source of action, then we are mistaken because, on further examination, willing is actually dependent on an affect (which has roots in the nonconscious).

However, according to Leiter, “willing” is experienced as an independent source of action, and this experience of the “will as independent” is merely described by the “phenomenology of willing” in BGE 19. This phenomenology shows us why we would experience “willing” as independent (since the feelings involved lead us to believe the “commandeering thought” is ours and that it results in action). The goal of Leiter’s phenomenology is to clarify what we experience in “willing” and to show us how the third part (iii’), the “affect of command”, leads us to erroneously experience our “will” as the causal genesis of our action.

While I believe it is possible that individuals have mistakenly identified their “will” as the sole cause of action, the causal genesis of action, this isn’t because we identify ourselves with the will per se; the reason why individuals have mistakenly identified their “will” as the causal genesis of action is because they erroneously believe that the will is a unitary and autonomous thing. Once again, I believe that Leiter’s phenomenology depends on a misreading of (iii), the “affect of command”, and a correct understanding of “affect” would be largely incompatible with his “Epiphenomenalist” reading (since the “affect”, which is part of the will, leads to action).

II. The Experiences connected to Willing an Action are not causally connected to the resulting Action (and)
III. The Account of the Actual Causal Genesis of an Action:

Now I will examine Leiter’s claims that either “the phenomenology of willing […] does not […] track an actual causal relationship”, or it does not track “a causal relationship sufficient to underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility” (4). In our diagram, we can see a sketch for the first claim on the left and a sketch for the second claim on the right:

So in the first case (labeled “Epiphenomenalism”), our experience of willing (β) is causally inert. Some deep cause (α) produced the experience (β) and is also responsible for the resultant action (γ). What is the deep cause?—the individual’s drives; according to Leiter, their type-facts (facts about their psycho-physical constitution).

Leiter says, “To put it in quasi-Humean terms, Nietzsche claims that because the complex of bodily feelings, commandeering thought, and meta-feeling are fairly constantly conjoined with succeeding bodily actions, we naturally infer (since it increases “the feeling of power”) that the will has caused the subsequent actions” (5). So because the experience of willing (β) is constantly conjoined with the resultant action (γ), we mistakenly infer that willing caused the action (when they were both actually produced by a deep cause (α)).

In the second case (labeled “Secondary Cause”), our experience of willing contains a commandeering thought (β) that does factor into the etiology of action (α→β→γ). However, and this is the reason why Leiter believes we would not be morally responsible, since the thought itself (β) is caused by something else (α), we are not responsible for the resultant action (γ). Leiter offers two premises when he explains this:

1. “The first premise is this: […] the commandeering thought [ ] is, itself, causally determined, at some point, by something other than the will, since thoughts that come into consciousness are causally determined by something other than the will” (6).

2. “The second premise […] is that being self-caused (causa sui as Nietzsche calls it) is a necessary condition for responsibility (see BGE 21)” (6).

Leiter’s point with the first premise is to say, as Nietzsche writes, “that a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, and not when ‘I’ want” (BGE 17); that is, that the commanding thought is compelled by a deep cause and not my will. His point with the second premise is to say that determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. In his words: “Now, Nietzsche, it must be conceded, simply takes for granted that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determination of the will” (7); Leiter’s claim, which I disagree with, I will return to in a moment.

First, let me say one more thing to clarify token- and type-epiphenomenalism. The error an agent makes in the first case (“Epiphenomenalism”) is to think their will does anything. The error in the second case (“Secondary Cause”) is that the agent believes that their will is autonomous. The correct thing to think in the first model is that your will doesn’t do anything. The correct thing to think in the second model is that your consciousness is not autonomous but dependent on your nonconcious drives.

I think “Epiphenomenalism” is an untenable position and is much stronger than viewing the will as “Secondary Cause”. In order to hold epiphenomenalism you have to believe that something like consciousness thoughts, misattribution of those thoughts to oneself, and belief that the thoughts caused action (through perhaps constant conjunction) actually occurs. And you have to believe that although this whole spectacle actually occurs, the whole thing is causally ineffective. However, doesn’t just the mere belief that you do or don’t have a will impact your actions? And doesn’t saying that some huge spectacle (viz., “willing”) occurs but has no causal influence whatsoever make a largely implausible claim? If anything is going to succeed, it is the weaker position: the will as “Secondary Cause”.

IV. Leiter’s Qualification against Ascription of Moral Responsibility:

So although “willing” may factor into the etiology of an action as a “Secondary Cause”, Nietzsche believes, according to Leiter, that since the “will” is itself determined by something else (viz., a deep cause), the agent who “wills” cannot be considered morally responsible.

While I agree that being determined and being free are mutually exclusive, I don’t believe that being determined is incompatible with responsibility, and I don’t believe that possessing a free and autonomous will is a necessary condition for responsibility. Lastly, I think Nietzsche would wholeheartedly agree with my position on free will, responsibility, and determinism.

Therefore, I believe Leiter is mistaken when he says that according to Nietzsche “being self-caused (causa sui as Nietzsche calls it) is a necessary condition for responsibility (see BGE 21)” (6). When we actually read BGE 21, we see that Nietzsche believes being self-caused is needed for possessing a “free will”; however, he mentions nothing in regards to it being a necessary condition for an agent to possess any degree of responsibility. In fact, he both denies the myths of a “free will” and an “un-free will” (the myth of a fully determined will that plays no role of its own), instead opting for the terms “strong” and “weak willed”, which reinforces the claim that Nietzsche believes that our will does play an important role.

I believe Nietzsche thinks that we can be responsible. However, according to him, yes, we are not responsible for the reason that Christianity gives us. Christianity says, according to Nietzsche, that we are free and that being a free agent is required for moral responsibility. You must be free in order to be considered responsible. So when Nietzsche says something to the extent, ‘we are not free, therefore, we are not morally responsible,’ he means that we are not responsible in the Christian sense. Nevertheless, there are other ways of being responsible that are compatible with being determined (cf. R. Jay Wallace’s text, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments).

Like I said, I think what Nietzsche is trying to say is not that he thinks we can’t be responsible for our actions, but rather, that we can’t be responsible for the reasons Christianity gives. Moreover, as soon as you discover, through his analysis of the will in BGE 19, that your will is not autonomous, you then realize that you cannot be morally responsible in the Christian sense (since the Christian sense requires that you have an autonomous will). However, this does not rule out the possibility (which I think is a fact) that Nietzsche has other means in mind for attaining responsibility, for taking responsibility, for exerting oneself and earning responsibility for our actions.

A “strong will” is clearly one who is able to make a more significant impact in the etiology of an action and is able to earn a greater degree of responsibility for his action when compared to a “weak will” who is unable to resist its many drives and temptations and is less capable of taking the reins on the agent’s action.

V. Conclusion:

Once again, Leiter has given us an excellent and clear essay; an excellent example of how Nietzsche secondary literature should proceed, and it is an essay that has produced much good discussion and will continue to sustain in rigorous discourses. In addition, I believe the “Epiphenomenalist” and will as “Secondary Cause” models are very useful for drawing out the features of and discussing Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Ultimately, I believe his phenomenology goes wrong in reading “affect” (as it appears in BGE 19) as a feeling of self-identification instead of as a psychic charge, produced by the drives. I also believe that the “Epiphenomenalist” (or token-epiphenomenalism) reading is untenable, while the reading of the will as “Secondary Cause” (or type-epiphenomenalism) is insufficient for undermining all notions of responsibility (although it does undermine the Christian sense of responsibility).

Leiter, Brian (2007), “Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will”, Philosophers’ Imprint, vol 7: 7, 1-15.

Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:59:00 -0700

I’d like to discuss the excellent essay by Ken Gemes titled, “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation”. This essay attempts to describe what “sublimation” means to Nietzsche and how he offers a criteria for the term that is purely psychological, self-contained, and free from cultural norms. The essay essentially uses Nietzsche to clarify a term in Freud, to define “sublimation” on a purely psychological basis. I will try to give a summary of the main ideas, interspersed with a few of my own extensions.

According to Freud, when a repression occurs, two components of a drive are repressed: the ideational component and the energetic component.

The first component is the ideational component, which includes the aim and object of the drive. For example, a sex drive may produce an image of a naked person in your mind; it may also make you direct your attention toward glancing at human bodies in a particular way. When the ideational component is repressed, no such images appear in your mind, and your attention is no longer guided in this way.

The second component that is repressed is the energetic component or the force that pushes you to pursue the aim of the drive. For example, in fully repressing the sex drive, not only are sexual images (the ideational component) kept from rising to consciousness, but also, the force or energy of the sex drive (the energetic component) is kept from expressing itself.

In repression, both the ideational component and the energetic component are inhibited:

Sublimation is the goal of psychoanalysis; hence, getting this concept straight is vital to understanding psychoanalysis. The term is important because “sublimation” is the means by which an individual is cured of his neurosis.

A neurosis is when the energetic component of a repressed drive breaks-out and is channeled toward neurotic behavior. I will explain neurosis with an example describing a man’s transition from repression to neurosis. Let’s say a man’s sex drive is fully repressed: both the ideational and energetic components have been repressed (as noted by the red x’s in the above diagram). However, afterward, the force of the pent-up energetic component builds-and-builds, and it eventually breaks, is released, and forces the man the act in an erratic manner. While the ideational component is still repressed, the energetic component is no longer repressed; however, the energy has been directed toward neurotic behavior (e.g. the man begins to act in an unhealthy obsessive compulsive manner). While the original direction of the sex drive’s energetic component would have been toward sex, the neurotically redirected energy compels the man to think and act in a way indicative of pathological symptoms.

In neurosis, the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in pathological symptoms:

On the other hand, sublimation works in a similar manner but with a healthier end (the ideational component remains x’ed out while the energetic component is allowed expression).

Before an individual has a drive sublimated, the person is either in a state of repression in which the energetic component must be carefully released and directed toward a healthy end or the man is in a state of neurosis in which the energetic component must be harnessed and redirected from an unhealthy to a healthy end.

In the case of a sublimated repression, for example, the energetic component could have been pent-up, at which point the man finds a way to release the energy and channel it toward, let’s say, art. In other words, to sublimate the repressed drive toward art.

In the case of a sublimated neurosis, for example, the energetic component, which had been e.g. directed toward obsessive compulsive behavior, is redirected toward producing art. The drive’s energy is redirected away from neurotic behavior and toward art.

In sublimation, the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in acceptable behavior:

As an interesting aside, let me mention that there are two ways in which sublimation can be attained. The first is attained without the direct involvement of consciousness, and the second is attained with the direct involvement of consciousness.

The first is non-conscious, in which the man successfully releases or redirects the energetic component almost accidentally, without becoming conscious of the repressed ideational component. For example, the man never realizes that he had been keeping a sexual fantasy from becoming conscious, but nevertheless, he releases or redirects the energetic component toward a healthier end.

The second means for attaining sublimation is conscious, and this is the means by which psychoanalysis operates. Psychoanalysis makes the patient aware of his repressed ideational component. For example, the man realizes that he had been keeping images of chained-up, naked women from rising to consciousness. The psychoanalyst has made him aware of the ideational component so that the man can realize that the accompanying energetic component needs to be released (if repressed) or redirected (if currently directed toward neurotic behavior). Once the patient has sublimated the energetic component, the original ideational component will fade away.

Let me add that we can call the first case, “unintentional sublimation,” since the energetic component was sublimated without the person becoming aware of the repressed ideational component, and we can call the second case, “intentional sublimation,” since the person becomes aware of the ideational component and actively strives to find a healthy vent for the energetic component.

The structural similarity that we find is that In both sublimation and in neurosis the ideational component remains repressed while the energetic component finds expression in alternative thoughts and behavior:

The crux of Gemes’s article is the following problem: how can we differentiate sublimations from neurosis?

As we can see, both sublimations and neurosis involve similar structures. In both cases, the original ideational component remains repressed while the original energetic component has been redirected toward some other end.

In order to distinguish between the two, Freud reluctantly offers one possibility: we can distinguish a sublimation from a neurosis by using cultural norms. For example, a sex drive that has been redirected toward artistic activity is considered sublimated if our culture puts a positive valence on artistic activity; a sex drive that has been redirected toward obsessive compulsive behavior is considered neurotic if our culture puts a negative valence on such behavior.

However, this attempt to differentiate between the two on the basis of cultural norms is ineffective since it produces another problem: if the cultural norms change, then what has been previously considered a sublimation could be considered a neurosis, and what has been previously considered a neurosis could be considered a sublimation.

In our example, if our culture begins to depreciate artistic activity, then the drive redirected toward such activity would be considered neurotic. If our culture begins to appreciate obsessive compulsive behavior, then the drive redirected toward such behavior would be considered sublimated. As Gemes says,

This emphasis on socially valued achievements would provide some means of separating neurotic symptoms from sublimations but at the high cost of introducing a totally nonpsychoanalytic, indeed a nonpsychological, element to the definition, namely, that of social valuation. One, presumably uncomfortable, consequence of such an account would be that as social values change, behavior that was at one time pathological would become a sublimation (40-1).

Thus it seems that a fundamental notion in psychoanalysis is not to be explained in strictly psychoanalytical terms. Even more worrying, these terms seem irredeemably normative and thus run against Freud’s general claim to be providing a merely scientific/descriptive account of psychological phenomena (41).

This is the appropriate point to introduce what according to Gemes is the solution Nietzsche offers: instead of relying on cultural norms to distinguish between the two manners of redirecting drives, Nietzsche distinguishes sublimations from neurosis on the basis of the individual’s own organization of drives. This provides a strictly psychoanalytic definition for the important concept of sublimation.

According to Nietzsche:

In the case of neurosis, redirected drives are disorganized because they have each been redirected toward different, extraneous ends. However, in the case of sublimation, drives are redirected and organized toward the unifying aim of a master drive.

With repression, a weaker drive is cast off and suppressed. In sublimation, the weaker drives are kept active in being redirected toward the end of the master drive.

Repression and neurosis produce disintegration while sublimation produces a unified individual. This solution, offered by Nietzsche, differentiates between the terms, sublimation and neurosis, on a strictly psychoanalytic basis and without recourse to social and cultural norms.

Now that I’ve finished summarizing the basic argument in the essay by Gemes, I’d like to take a look at the relationship of both drive unification to the “strong will” and of drive disintegration to the “weak will”.

Nietzsche writes:

The multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of any systematic order among them results in a “weak will”; their coordination under a single predominant impulse results in a “strong” will: in the first case it is the oscillation and lack of gravity; in the latter, the precision and clarity of direction (KSA 13:14[219]).

So Nietzsche would probably accept the claim that both our repressions and neuroses result in a “weak will”, and also that the sublimation of our drives under an organizing drive’s aim results in a unified individual with a “strong will”.

Take the following section from Nietzsche as briefly describing the unifying process of sublimation:

To become what one is, one must not have the slightest notion of what one is. […] The whole surface of consciousness—consciousness is a surface—must be kept clear of all great imperatives. […] Meanwhile the organizing “idea” that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down—it begins to command; slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads; it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as a means toward the whole—one by one, it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task, “goal,” “aim,” or “meaning” (EH II: 9).

The master drive is the “organizing ‘idea’” that slowly collects weaker drives by sublimating each, in turn, toward its aim. As Gemes says, “This notion of training subservient drives is to be explicated in terms of the redirection of those drives away from their initial, primary goal toward a secondary goal that is more in line with the master drive” (47).

In the prior quote from his notebooks on the weak and strong will (KSA 13:14[219]), we can see that Nietzsche labels the disorganized individual “weak willed” and the unified individual “strong willed”. Taking this into consideration, let me conclude with an aside: by taking “will” to mean “the ability to resist temptation,” we can imagine how a disorganized individual might be easily tempted, distracted, seduced, and might helplessly react to various stimuli in an automatic manner. On the other hand, the unified, “strong willed” individual resists temptation and is strong enough to not be distracted from his aim; he pursues his task with resolve and is able to tolerate stimuli without needing to react.

Gemes, Ken (2009), “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation,” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38: 38-59.

The Role of Consciousness in Schopenhauer

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:03:00 -0700

At the conclusion of a Schopenhauer & Nietzsche seminar that I completed in the previous spring semester, I wrote a paper titled, ”On the Role of Consciousness in Schopenhauer”.

The essay presents a look into how Schopenhauer conceives of consciousness and its battle with the unconscious. I then conclude the essay with several objections to Schopenhauer brought up by Nietzsche. Here is my abstract:

Schopenhauer presents us with a fascinating look into the power of the unconscious. However, the leading theme in his discussion, as detailed in The World as Will and Representation, is freedom from this unconscious. Nietzsche, heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, recognizes the great importance of the unconscious mind. However, he disagrees with Schopenhauer’s evaluation (that freedom from the unconscious is desirable), and he believes that such emancipation is impossible; Nietzsche does not believe consciousness can be severed (or that it can function when severed) from the unconscious drives. However, before detailing Nietzsche’s criticisms, I spend a great portion of the essay explaining Schopenhauer’s philosophy of consciousness.

In this essay, I discuss Schopenhauer’s philosophy, beginning with a very brief discussion of the similarities and differences between Schopenhauer’s and Kant’s metaphysics, and leading to Schopenhauer’s ultimate description of how consciousness (or the intellect) can free itself from the drives. In accordance with Schopenhauer’s philosophy, I describe the role of consciousness in the normal individual to then contrast it with its role in the genius or exceptional individual. I also discuss the physical, bodily basis he formulates between the normal and exceptional individuals. Finally, I briefly articulate how Schopenhauer conceives of the act of emancipation from the drives by the exceptional individual. In conclusion, the essay ends with a presentation of four contentions that Nietzsche gives against four respective claims found in the discussed aspects of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.

Click on the reference to download the essay:

Narziss, Carlos (2010), “The Role of Consciousness in Schopenhauer”.

Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 — August 25, 1900).An edited...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:48:00 -0700

Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 — August 25, 1900).
An edited compilation of photographs taken by Hans Olde from the series, The Ill Nietzsche, Summer 1899.