10
Michael Ure
1 Nietzsche as philosophical therapist
We need to begin by asking whether Nietzsche does in fact conceive of himself as a therapist. As a philosopher does Nietzsche aim to cure illnesses? This question has come to the fore in Nietzsche studies with the burgeoning interest in his indebtedness to the Hellenistic schools (Hutter 2006; Ure 2008, 2009, 2013a, 2013b; Ansell-Pearson 2010; Rutherford 2011; Armstrong 2013). In this section I argue that the answer to this question is a qualified ‘yes.’ This answer might appear obvious to anyone familiar with Nietzsche’s work. One of his key meta-philosophical assumptions, which he clearly borrows from the classical and Hellenistic schools, is that philosophy has the potential to cure human maladies, and that to be worthy of the name philosophers ought to be doctors to the soul. Arguably more than any other modern philosopher Nietzsche sought to revive the ancient model of therapeutic philosophy while acknowledging and struggling with what this might amount to under modern conditions. As early as the mid-1870s Nietzsche identified his own ‘untimeliness’ with the idea that ‘science’ only has value as long as it enhances life. Following the classical model he anchored the value of ‘science,’ including philosophy under this head, in its capacity to enable ‘life’ to flourish. In criticizing ‘official’ modern philosophy Nietzsche makes clear his allegiance to the classical notion that philosophy is first and foremost a way of life. Nietzsche sweepingly indicts ‘official’ philosophy because it is not a way of life. Modern philosophers know how to reason, he suggests, but they do not conceive their philosophy as a practice that transforms their lives:
No one dares to fulfil the philosophical law in himself, no one lives philosophically with that simple loyalty that constrained a man of antiquity to bear himself as Stoic wherever he was, whatever he did, once he had affirmed his loyalty to the Stoa. All modern philosophising is political and official, limited by governments, churches and academies, customs and the cowardice of men to the appearance of scholarship; it sighs “if only” and knows “there once was” and does nothing else. (UM 129)
Nietzsche clearly does not want to join those ‘official’ scholars who lament that philosophy once took shape as a way of life yet lack the courage to challenge convention. Nietzsche’s sweeping indictment is premised on his own ambition of reclaiming this lost model of philosophy.
Yet some recent work denies that Nietzsche is first and foremost a philosophical therapist. Jessica Berry, for example, challenges the notion that we should conceive of him as a philosophical therapist, even if he identifies with this model. It is mistaken, she claims, to characterize Nietzsche’s philosophy as ‘fundamentally therapeutic’ (Berry 2010, p. 134). Berry’s interpretation of Nietzsche, I argue, is unsustainable. However, examining the doubts she raises about Nietzsche’s therapeutic credentials will serve to illuminate his shifting account of the nature and limits of philosophical therapy. Nietzsche’s therapy, I suggest, varies as he changes and revises his basic philosophical framework and conceptual lexicon. Let us consider first the grounds for doubting that Nietzsche conceives himself or can rightly lay claim to the title of philosophical therapist.
Berry argues first that as a matter of principle Nietzsche is ‘in no real position to recommend a reliable route to health’ and second that as matter of fact ‘he does not offer recommendations to others; he assiduously avoids doing so’ (Berry 2010, p. 136). On the first head she argues that even if Nietzsche ‘possessed the ambition to develop a therapeutic program . . . his critique of moralists and “physicians of the soul” and his suspicion of the very universality of their claims’ would make it impossible for him to recommend a therapeutic treatment (Berry 2010, p. 136). Nietzsche’s criticisms of moralists’ and soul doctors’ claim to know a universal ideal of flourishing and reliable means of attaining it, so her argument runs, should preclude him from tendering therapeutic recommendations.
The first claim amounts to the suggestion that Nietzsche believes there is no basis for the ancient model of philosophy because there is no genuine knowledge or expertise about the soul’s health and sickness. How could Nietzsche develop his own philosophical therapy if he argues there is no expertise when it comes to such matters? Yet though Nietzsche clearly does have serious doubts about those who have presented themselves as physicians of the soul, he does not for this reason jettison the therapeutic model of philosophy. In fact he aims to replace past failed physicians with new, successful physicians. Nietzsche highlights his commitment to reclaiming philosophical therapy from quack doctors in the very title of the section in which he criticizes the latter’s false therapeutic expertise: ‘Where are the new physicians of the soul?’ (D 52). Nietzsche argues that those soul-doctors who once claimed therapeutic expertise were in fact ignorant of the true causes of and pathways to health or flourishing. He does not target the idea of the philosophical therapist per se, only its earlier incarnations. He criticizes the old ‘quack’ doctors in the name of new physicians of the soul with a true grasp of therapeutic principles and practices. ‘As yet’ he claims ‘we lack above all the physicians for whom that which has hitherto been called practical morality will have to have been transformed into an aspect of their art and science of healing’ (D 202). After claiming that past physicians of the soul have afflicted humankind with worse sicknesses than those they sought to cure, and they have done so through the very remedies they prescribed, Nietzsche poses the following question:
It is said of Schopenhauer . . . that after they had been neglected for so long he again took seriously the sufferings of mankind: where is he who, after they have been neglected so long, will again take seriously the antidotes to these sufferings and put in the pillory the unheard-of quack-doctoring with which, under the most glorious names, mankind has hitherto been accustomed to treat the sicknesses of its soul? (D 52)
In Daybreak Nietzsche clearly criticizes the past physicians of the soul and their bogus therapies in the name of defining new physicians of the soul who take seriously the antidotes to human suffering. In a later section entitled ‘Where are the needy in spirit?’ Nietzsche identifies himself as a poor doctor of the spirit who enjoys ‘giving away [his] spiritual house and possessions, like a father confessor (Beichtvater) who sits in his corner anxious for one in need to come and tell of the distress of his mind, so that he may again fill his hands and his heart and make light his troubled soul (beunruhigte Seele)’ (D 449).
Through this self-description Nietzsche implicitly identifies continuities and discontinuities between his own model of the philosophical doctor and alternative Hellenistic and Christian models.1 Nietzsche compares his doctor to the Christian father confessor who wants to ease others’ distress. Both, as he sees it, are spiritual directors of the soul. Yet he also distinguishes his notion of the spiritual director from its Christian model in ways that bring him close to the Hellenistic notion of the philosophical therapist (see also GS 289). Nietzsche’s doctor does not believe his patients are distressed because of their fallen, sinful natures and he does not therefore see them as in need of absolution and cure by way of repentance and acceptance of God’s grace. For this reason Nietzsche’s father confessor does not seek from his patients confessions of ‘inner’ desires or ‘bodily’ drives, nor of course does he interpret their condition in terms of the Christian narrative of redemption from fallen nature (D 86). Nietzsche’s therapists do not require sufferers to speak the truth about their desires, one that they alone can know, as the Christian father confessor does. To borrow Foucault’s terminology, in the Christian model of confession the subject of enunciation must be the referent of the utterance. In Christian spirituality, as he explains, the guided subject must be present within the true discourse as the object of his own true discourse.
By contrast, Greco-Roman spiritual physicians do not elicit from their patients such individualized psychological confessions; they do not require that their patients to tell the unique ‘truth’ of their desires. Rather, the philosophical therapist takes as the object of treatment the patient’s false or confused beliefs about things, especially about the value of things. The Greco-Roman philosophical therapist identifies the source of patients’ distress in their beliefs and judgements, not in the malevolence or sinfulness of their natural desires. Taking a similar view, Nietzsche emphasizes that he conceives patients’ distress as deriving from intellectual errors. Nietzsche’s poor doctor of the soul ‘aids those whose head is confused by opinions,’ not by ‘wicked’ or ‘sinful’ personal desires (D 449). Nietzsche’s therapy frees individuals from the distress caused by confused opinions, not from wicked desires. These are confusions of the head, not the ‘heart,’ so to speak. Nietzsche locates the source of human distress in false opinions or judgements, not in their evil nature, and their cure lies in correcting their judgements and not in renouncing their nature or desires. ‘It is not things’ as Nietzsche puts it in quintessentially Stoic terms ‘but opinions about things that have absolutely no existence which have so deranged mankind!’ (D 563).2
Nietzsche glosses here Epictetus famous Stoic maxim in Handbook 5: ‘Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things’ (Epictetus 5). Elsewhere Nietzsche applauds Epictetus’ ‘wisdom’ as ‘the whispering of the solitary to himself in the crowded marketplace’ (AOM. 386). ‘Death’ Epictetus averred in this section ‘. . . is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own misfortune upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself’ (Epictetus 5). The sage, then, will not blame others or himself for his distress, but will correct the false principles or judgements that cause his emotional turmoil. The sage eliminates his distress by correcting his judgements so that they express the truth; he will judge that death, for example, is not terrible. For this reason the Stoic sage has no need to blame himself or others because he is not distressed by events. For the Stoic sage things are exactly as he wishes them to be – whatever happens. ‘Do not ask things to happen as you wish,’ as Epictetus put it a few sections later, ‘but wish them to happen as they do happen and your life will go smoothly’ (Epictetus 8).
We can see then how in the middle period Nietzsche aligns his therapeutic model with the Greco-Roman model. Nietzsche clearly does possess the ambition to develop a therapeutic programme. Indeed he identifies the model of the physician and spiritual director as central to his notion of the philosopher’s vocation. The case that we should not conceive Nietzsche as a philosophical therapist must then rely on showing that despite his explicit intentions of reinventing this model, his philosophical perspective rules out or undermines his therapeutic aspirations. The claim is that even though Nietzsche clearly has therapeutic ambitions, his critique of universal morality is incompatible with his dream of reinventing the model of the philosophical physician.
However, Nietzsche does not take the view that there is any necessary conflict between his critique of universal morality and his philosophical therapy. Nietzsche assumes that his moral anti-universalism is compatible with his therapeutic ambitions. We need to examine how Nietzsche understands the relationship between his moral critique and his philosophical therapy. Let us consider first the reasons for Nietzsche’s rejection of universal moral laws before turning to its implications for his therapeutic ambitions.
In Daybreak Nietzsche opposes the idea of a universally binding moral law for at least two reasons. First, as an anti-metaphysical naturalist Nietzsche assumes that we should only accept a universal moral law if it can be shown to have ‘natural’ foundations. In other words, he argues that we can legitimately prescribe a course of action as right – as something that everyone should or ought to do – only if we can identify a universal goal or telos intrinsic to our species. Yet following the general Darwinian anti-teleological principle he argues that we cannot find in nature any final species’ goals or ends. On the Darwinian view, evolution is a purposeless, mechanical process that ‘selects’ from the species’ random variations those that contingently happen to foster its self-preservation. Second, Nietzsche argues that prescribing universal moral imperatives conflicts with his view that every individual has ‘the right to act arbitrarily (Willkürlicher) and foolishly according to the light, bright or dim, of [their] own reason’ (D 107). In Daybreak one of Nietzsche’s claims is that individuals and groups should be free to impose on themselves laws that they judge to be in their own interests or conducive to their own flourishing. Nietzsche implies that the legitimacy of moral claims depends on individuals endorsing it on the basis of their own reason.
What implications does Nietzsche draw from his Darwinian/evolutionary insight into nature and his Enlightenment commitment to individual self-legislation for the project of reinventing philosophical therapy? Nietzsche’s evolutionary perspective rejects Christian and Kantian idea of universal, timeless moral imperatives. ‘For there is no longer any “ought”, as he explains “. . . for morality insofar as it was an ‘ought,’ has been annihilated by our way of thinking as has religion”’ (HH 34). Yet Nietzsche does not thereby rule out the possibility or legitimacy of therapeutic recommendations offered as hypothetical or conditional imperatives of the form: if you wish to flourish pursue ‘thus and thus course of action’ or act according to ‘thus and thus judgement.’ In other words, Nietzsche argues that philosophers can offer recommendations based not on metaphysical notions of the species’ intrinsic purposes, but on their evaluation of what the species and individuals require to flourish in their given context. ‘To recommend (anempfehlen) a goal to mankind is something quite different’ as he explains ‘the goal is then thought of as something which lies in our own discretion; supposing the recommendation appealed to mankind, it could in pursuit of it also impose upon itself a moral law, likewise at its own discretion’ (D 108).
Nietzsche contrasts recommendations (empfehlen) and prescriptions (Vorschriften): the philosophical therapist can offer the former since these are conditional imperatives that allow their recipients to decide for themselves rather than categorical imperatives that by definition deny that the application of rules is a matter of choice or discretion. Nietzsche suggests that philosophical physicians can develop therapeutic recommendations as experientially testable propositions. That is to say, he claims that philosophical physicians’ recommendations should be the result of and subject to a type of experimental testing. Once again Nietzsche’s draws directly on the Hellenistic model of ethics in developing this notion of ethical experimentation. ‘So far as praxis is concerned’ he observes ‘I view the various moral schools as experimental laboratories in which a considerable number of recipes for the art of living have been thoroughly practised and lived to the hilt. The results of all their experiments belong to us, as our legitimate property’ (KSA 9, 15 (59)). In order to discover whether the various recipes for the art of living are conducive to health or sickness, Nietzsche suggests, we must put them into practice and observe whether they have a regular set of effects on our health. Nietzsche’s therapist draws heavily on therapeutic knowledge derived from ‘experience’ rather than mere ‘knowledge.’ The Nietzschean physician, as he puts it, lives ‘with a head free of fever, equipped with a handful of knowledge and a bagful of experience’ (D 449). Nietzsche’s therapist, in short, replaces metaphysically grounded moral laws with empirically tested health recommendations.
Nietzsche then does not believe that his anti-teleological evolutionary principle or his Enlightenment principle of individual autonomy, necessarily rules out the identification of successful therapies. From his Darwinian and liberal principles Nietzsche infers that philosophical therapists can legitimately recommend goals to mankind or individuals, but they ought not to command them to obey allegedly universal laws. In the middle works he ties the validity of these recommendations to experimental testing and maintains that individuals have the right to freely apply these recommendations according to the bright, light and dim of their own reason.
2 Smith’s ethics of sociability, Nietzsche’s ethical perfectionism
Nietzsche puts this theoretical position into practice. Far from assiduously avoiding offering recommendations to others, as Berry claims, he in fact does just this: he offers others therapeutic recommendations that he suggests they test by way of experimentation. In Daybreak, for example, Nietzsche claims that the Greeks properly grasped the harmfulness of pity, and therefore counted it as a ‘morbid recurring affect the perilousness of which can be removed by periodical deliberate discharge’ (D 134).3 The Greek tragedians, in Nietzsche’s view, were effective cultural physicians. After reprising this Aristotelian notion of tragedy as a catharsis of pity and fear, Nietzsche continues: ‘He who for a period of time made the experiment (versuchsweise) of intentionally pursuing occasions for pity in his everyday life and set before his soul all the misery available to him in his surroundings would inevitably grow sick and melancholic. He, however, whose desire it is to serve mankind as a physician in any sense whatever will have to be very much on his guard against that sensation – it will paralyse him at every decisive moment and apply a ligature to his knowledge and his subtle helpful hand’ (D 134). Here Nietzsche ties his therapeutic recommendation to experimentally derived knowledge: we discover the effects of pity by putting it to the test and we measure its value by its ill-effects on our flourishing. Against the Kantian notion of making pure reason the grounds of synthetic a priori moral laws, unconditionally binding on all rational beings, Nietzsche develops a posteriori therapeutic recommendations – recommendations drawn from experience of what makes it possible for individuals to flourish. Nietzsche believes that such experiments can confirm at least some therapeutic principles of general application: namely, freeing ourselves of our own and others’ emotional distress (fear, grief and anger) makes for a smoothly flowing, unencumbered life, whereas giving credence to our own and others’ emotions ‘destroys’ our health (D 137). Nietzsche claims that by exercising compassion we dangerously over-extend our emotional capacities; we overdraw our psychological credit, so to speak. Nietzsche justifies this claim by suggesting that we can test it practically or experimentally. Nietzsche commits himself to an ethical eudaimonism based on ‘experimentally’ generated knowledge.
Nietzsche then goes on to explicitly recommend the Stoic therapy and discipline of passions of fear, grief and anger. He does so by pinpointing a conventional Stoic exercise of seeing oneself from the point of view of a detached observer: ‘To view our own experiences with the eyes with which we are accustomed to view them they are the experiences of others – this is very comforting and a medicine to be recommended’ (D 137).4 Here Nietzsche clearly alludes to Epictetus’ Handbook. According to Epictetus, we should be affected by our own ‘misfortunes’ – for example the loss of our own child – in exactly the same way as we would if we were observing another’s loss. Our impartial, detached view of others’ misfortune gives us an objective or rational measure of the value of such events that we should apply to the events of our own lives (Epictetus 26).
Nietzsche reprises the Stoic exercise of seeing oneself from the standpoint of the ‘impartial spectator,’ to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase (Smith 2002). In Daybreak Nietzsche recommends this exercise of seeing ourselves from an impartial, third party standpoint primarily as a remedy for our emotional distress – fear of money-loss, grief over a death or anger at a slight – rather than like Smith as a mechanism of social harmonization. If I wish to free myself of such distress, he recommends, then I should see myself from the impartial spectator’s standpoint. Since, so Smith and Nietzsche assume, the impartial spectator has far less concern for my predicament that I do, if I assume his vantage point on my predicament I will significantly lower the pitch and intensity of my distressing emotions.
The comparison between Nietzsche and Smith’s neo-Stoic discipline of desire is a fruitful one. Smith, as I suggested, made this Stoic exercise central to his theory of political harmony. This exercise, Smith claims, tunes individual moral sentiments so that they ‘have such a correspondence with one another, as is sufficient for the harmony of society. Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords, and this is all that is warranted or required’ (Smith 2002, p. 27). Smith then identifies neo-Stoicism as a political therapy rather than simply an individual therapy: the mechanism of the impartial spectator not only enables individuals to moderate their emotions, in doing so it contributes to social harmonization (see Muller 1995; Forman-Barzilai 2011; Nussbaum forthcoming). By seeing my own circumstances from the standpoint of an impartial spectator, he argues, I can tune my emotions to the lower pitch that is acceptable to my fellows. Smith’s impartial spectator is the sociological version of the Stoic’s cosmological view from above. Just as the Stoics held that seeing oneself from the cosmic perspective enabled one to harmonize his will with the whole, Smith held that seeing oneself from the impartial spectator’s standpoint enables one to harmonize his sentiments with those of the social whole. Smith’s sociological view from above ensures ‘propriety’ of our sentiments: that is, if we adopt the impartial spectator’s standpoint on our own sentiments we will only express these sentiments to the degree that others will consider proper in the given circumstances. It enables us to ‘reduce the violence of [our] passions to that pitch of moderation, in which the impartial spectator can entirely enter into them’ (Smith 2002, p. 31). Smith argues that his neo-Stoic political therapy is necessary for the sake of social harmony – that is, so that citizens have a basic set of shared sentimental responses to all the turns of fortune’s wheel. Smith believes this sentimental concord is the basis of civic peace.
According to Smith, we do not have to adopt the Stoics’ ‘sublime contemplation’ and view ourselves from the cosmological perspective to attain tranquillity; it is sufficient for us to see ourselves through the eyes of strangers (Smith 2002, p. 345). Indeed, Smith worries that if we ascend to the Stoic’s sublime cosmological point of view we risk becoming ‘altogether indifferent and unconcerned in the success or miscarriage of everything Nature has prescribed as the proper business and occupation of our lives’ (Smith 2002, p. 345). As we shall see, it is just this Stoic rigoristic disdain for the ordinary that Nietzsche exploits for his own neo-Stoic therapy. Against this rigoristic, cosmic Stoicism, Smith argues that by assuming the impartial spectators’ view and becoming strangers to ourselves we can achieve the degree of tranquillity requisite to social harmony.
Smith’s conception of the harmonization of the passions involves an asymmetry thesis (Nussbaum 2008, p. 156). On the one hand, as we have seen, Smith suggests that when it comes to our own misfortunes and injuries, we should cultivate what he calls the noble virtues; that is to say, like true Stoics we should spurn our own grief and resentment as expressions of weakness and misjudgement. Yet, on the one hand, Smith suggests as spectators we need to cultivate what he calls amiable virtues; that is to say, we should learn to re-echo all the sentiments of those with whom we converse, who grieve for their calamities, who resent their injuries, and who rejoice at their good fortune. As Smith puts it we need to have a ‘tender sympathy’ for all the sentiments of others. We need to be good friends to others, yet strangers to ourselves. ‘(H)ence it is’ as he explains this asymmetry, ‘that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their [i.e. mankind’s] whole grace and propriety’ (Smith 2002, p. 30).
In sharp contrast, Nietzsche defends a consistent Stoic philosophical therapy and repudiates Smith’s asymmetry thesis. As we have seen, following the Stoics Nietzsche maintains that it is rational and therapeutic to view our own ‘misfortunes’ as if they were the experiences of others. On the other hand, he argues, to follow advice such as Smith’s ‘and imbibe the experiences of others as if they were ours – as is the demand of a philosophy of pity – this would destroy us, and in a very short time: but just try the experiment of doing it, and fantasise no longer!’ (D 137). Nietzsche argues that for the sake of our own flourishing we should not only view our own emotions ‘impartially,’ as Smith encourages us to, but we should also apply this same impartiality to others’ emotions. If it is objectively correct to apply to my own case the Stoic judgement that emotions are irrational – judgements that attribute value to things that are valueless – then it is also correct to apply it to others. Grief over a death is irrational regardless of who suffers it.
Let us then sum up this comparison of Smith and Nietzsche’s neo-Stoic therapy. Smith, as we have seen, argues that social harmony requires each citizen will to assume a peculiarly asymmetrical perspective: they must take a cold Stoic view of their own passions and a tender-hearted, ‘sympathetic’ view of their fellows’ passions. Smith argues that this inconsistent neo-Stoic therapy is necessary to the harmony of society. By contrast, Nietzsche seeks to develop an alternative neo-Stoic therapy for the sake of individual happiness or ethical perfectionism. If we are to realize individual happiness, he argues, we must apply the Stoic therapy consistently. Unlike Smith, then, Nietzsche argues that we must rise above not only our own, but also our neighbours’ suffering rather than sympathetically entering into and re-echoing his/her sentiments. We must be not only out beyond ourselves, but also ‘(o)ut beyond our neighbours too,’ as he puts it (D 146). If we can each rise above our own and others’ distress then we will make ‘the burden of our own as light as possible.’ We move much more easily, he maintains, without emotional burdens. At the same time as Nietzsche develops his own neo-Stoic ethical eudaimonism he repudiates political therapies like Smith’s that aim to deploy Stoic therapies as mechanisms that aim at collective sentimental attunement. He condemns them on the grounds that they sacrifice the individual for the sake of the whole. Nietzsche claims that the major eighteenth and nineteenth century moral undercurrent of compassion generates political therapies that aim at ‘nothing less than a fundamental remoulding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual . . . one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exists only larger bodies and their members’ (D 132).
3 From ethical perfection to bio-political transformation
Ultimately, however, Nietzsche identifies his own neo-Stoic therapy not simply as a mechanism or exercise necessary to individual happiness and freedom, but as a political therapy necessary to the enhancement of the species’ power. As we have seen, Nietzsche initially draws on Hellenistic therapies, especially Stoicism, as an integral aspect of his reinvention of ancient ethical perfectionism. However, in early 1880s what we might call a bio-political agenda begins to take shape in Nietzsche’s work and gradually transforms his philosophical therapy. As we have seen, in Human, All Too Human and Daybreak Nietzsche draws on ancient Hellenistic philosophical therapies as legitimate alternatives to dominant contemporary moralities of duty and compassion. Initially, like his Hellenistic predecessors, Nietzsche identifies philosophical therapies as a practice that makes it possible for every individual to achieve happiness or flourishing by calming their emotional turmoil. In sharp contrast, Nietzsche’s later bio-political agenda aims only at healing those rare higher individuals who have the capacity to elevate the species.5 Indeed, once Nietzsche rejects the belief that philosophical therapy can help every individual to achieve flourishing and his Enlightenment commitment to individual moral autonomy he is left with a quasi-Darwinian view that it is legitimate or ‘natural’ for the few to use and exploit the many as scaffolding to reach their own heights. Nietzsche shifts from reinventing the Hellenistic philosophies as therapies for human-all-too-human emotions to using them as therapies to facilitate the species’ evolutionary transformation. In the remainder of this chapter I examine Nietzsche’s move from a philosophical therapy that aims at individual eudaimonia to one that aims at the species’ transformation.
Already in Daybreak we see how the clouds of what we might call his bio-political agenda starts to cast shadows over his philosophical therapy and its commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy. We can see this by examining how Nietzsche’s political motivation underpins his neo-Stoic therapy. Ultimately Nietzsche’s bio-political ambitions explain his insistence that we must apply the Stoic therapy of the passions with iron consistency and rise above our own and others’ suffering.
In opposition to his age’s morality of compassion and sympathy, Nietzsche argues for his own peculiar neo-Stoic ‘higher and freer viewpoint’ (D 146). Nietzsche’s neo-Stoic view from above looks beyond the immediate baleful consequences to others (including ‘doubt, grief and even worse things’) and under certain circumstances legitimates pursuing more distant goals ‘even,’ as he is at pains to emphasize, ‘at the cost of the suffering of others’ (D 146). Nietzsche deploys his neo-Stoic therapy and its exercises as a mechanism that will enable free spirits to contribute to strengthening and raising higher the species’ ‘feeling of power’ (D 146). If the species is to elevate itself, he asserts, it must sacrifice some of its members. Here we see how and why Nietzsche as a cultural physician deploys a neo-Stoic political therapy: he conceives fellow-feeling as an obstacle to the free spirit’s capacity to sacrifice others for the sake of the species’ flourishing. It is here that we can specify the political significance of his neo-Stoic therapy. Nietzsche conceives his neo-Stoic therapy not only as a means by which individuals might acquire the ‘art of the Olympians’ and enjoy rather than lament the misfortunes of mankind (D 144; Ure 2013a). He also conceives it as an exercise that will enable free spirits to ‘transcend [their] own pity’ so that they can sacrifice others on the altar of the species’ enhancement (D 146). Pity stands in the way of the free-spirit’s political goal of enhancing of the species’ power; the neo-Stoic therapy of the passions is one of the key mechanisms for overcoming this obstacle. For this reason Nietzsche argues free spirits must reject any inconsistent application of Stoic discipline. If, as he argues, free spirits are right to take a lofty attitude towards their own suffering and not feel grief or resentment when they are the victims of misfortune or injustice, then they are also right to adopt the same attitude towards others. ‘May we not’ as he puts it rhetorically ‘treat our neighbour as we treat ourselves?’ (D 146).
Nietzsche exhorts free spirits to transcend their pity and learn the Olympian art of delighting in others’ sufferings so they are able to sacrifice others to their higher bio-political goal. If they allow pity to guide their choices they must forbid themselves inflicting suffering on others. He draws on Stoic philosophy and its exercises precisely because they enable free spirits to aim to extirpate their fellow-feeling. Where Smith identifies sympathy as necessary condition of social harmony, Nietzsche identifies it as one of the chief obstacles to the species’ full flourishing: it prevents free spirits from sacrificing others’ in the name of a higher goal.
We can also see how Nietzsche’s nascent bio-political agenda runs at cross-purposes to his Enlightenment ideal of moral autonomy. As we saw earlier, in Daybreak Nietzsche railed against the metaphysical notion of unconditional moral duty, according each individual ‘the right to act arbitrarily and foolishly according to the light, bright or dim, of [their] own reason’ (D 107). Yet as his nascent bio-political project takes shape Nietzsche gradually jettisons this Enlightenment commitment and argues that free spirits have legitimate grounds for sacrificing individuals on the altar of a higher collective goal. ‘Supposing’ Nietzsche asks rhetorically ‘we acted in the sense of self-sacrifice, what would forbid us to sacrifice our neighbour as well?’ (D 146). He argues that if free-spirits are willing to sacrifice themselves for a higher species’ goal then there is no reason to forbid them sacrificing others as well. Nietzsche ignores the obvious riposte to this specious argument: viz., what forbids free spirits from sacrificing others for the sake of a general or collective goal is others’ right to decide for themselves, whether and to what ends they are willing to sacrifice themselves. That one person is prepared to sacrifice himself for a collective goal does not entitle him to make this same decision on another’s behalf. Perhaps sensing the weakness of his argument Nietzsche concedes that it might be best if ‘we’ persuade our neighbour ‘to feel himself to be a sacrifice’ and to submit himself to ‘the task for which we employ him’ (D 146). Yet, if this task of persuasion fails, as Nietzsche makes clear, free spirits are entitled to sacrifice their neighbours for the sake of a collective or general ends – that is to cause them suffering for the species’ greater good whether they agree to it or not. Thanks to their Stoic discipline, Nietzsche’s free spirits will feel no pity for those they sacrifice. Their protests will fall on deaf ears (D 144; GS 338). Nietzsche’s free spirits, we might say, are free in the sense that they do not subject their actions to the Enlightenment ideal of political respect for others’ autonomy or the moral constraint of concern for their suffering.
In principle Nietzsche’s project of species’ enhancement prioritizes species’ enhancement over individual liberty and in practice, he believes, it will necessarily require sacrificing some individuals for the sake of a higher species’ goal. In Daybreak Nietzsche gives free spirits license to sacrifice others largely for the sake of pursuing knowledge. Nietzsche’s suggestion is that if free spirits are to pursue knowledge to the fullest possible extent they must be prepared to cause harm in the sense of depriving others of the pieties and traditions that orient and console them. Nietzsche legitimates sacrificing others in the name of knowledge. In this case, Nietzsche’s free spirits cause others’ harm by depriving them of beliefs that console them or by rejecting shared opinions that bind individuals and communities. Free-spirits’ pursuit of knowledge causes sorrow for others: the loss of consoling beliefs and shared sentiments. Nietzsche conceives this as a tragic, yet necessary outcome of the pursuit of science (D 562). Nietzsche enjoins free spirits to overcome their pity for those they harm in this way so that they can realize the ideal of knowledge. ‘(W)e would all’ he declares ‘prefer the destruction of mankind to the regression from knowledge’ (D 429; D 45).
In the later works, however, Nietzsche legitimates sacrificing others in a much more dangerous, politically significant sense. Nietzsche moves from a radical Enlightenment commitment to knowledge at any cost to a bio-politics of species’ enhancement. Here Nietzsche argues that it is a necessary condition of the species’ advancement that the many are exploited for the benefit of the biologically blessed few. At its height, Nietzsche’s bio-political programme justifies instrumentalizing the lives of many for the exclusive purpose of enhancing the lives of the few. Nietzsche’s radical Enlightenment politics holds that knowledge is incompatible with the comforting illusions required by the many. Nietzsche’s bio-political programme maintains that the species’ enhancement is incompatible with the political autonomy of the many. For this reason as Nietzsche’s bio-political project – or ‘the enhancement of the type “man”’ – takes front and centre stage in his later works he explicitly jettisons the Enlightenment regard for individual autonomy and equal rights and hardens his political opposition to compassion (BGE 257). However, one thing remains constant as Nietzsche makes this shift: in both cases he believes a neo-Stoic therapy is necessary to eliminate any compassion that might stand in the way of the respective political programmes.
Let us briefly consider Nietzsche’s shift to this bio-political programme and its impact on his philosophical therapy. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche explicitly defends the view that the species’ enhancement hinges on an order of rank that allows the higher types to exploit the lower. ‘Every enhancement of the type “man”’ as he puts it ‘has so far been the work of aristocratic society – and it will be so again and again – a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other. Without that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata – when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down upon subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance – that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown wider either – the craving for an ever widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further stretching, more comprehensive states – in brief, simply the enhancement of the type “man”. . .’ (BGE 257).
Nietzsche maintains that the current ruling caste is in need of a political therapy in order to maintain their belief that they have the right to pursue this bio-political project of species’ enhancement. The species’ flourishing hinges on the ruling castes’ belief that their flourishing justifies enslaving lesser types. Nietzsche’s late therapy aims at restoring higher types’ good conscience about sacrificing the lesser. ‘The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy’ he maintains ‘is that it experiences itself not as a function (whether of the monarchy or the commonwealth) but as their meaning and justification – that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments. Their fundamental faith simply has to be that society must not exist for society’s sake but only as the foundation and scaffolding on which a choice type of being is able to raise itself to its higher task and to a higher state of being – comparable to those sun-seeking vines of Java – they are called Sipo Matador – that so long and so often enclasp an oak tree with their tendrils until eventually, high above it but supported by it, they can unfold their crowns in the open light and display their happiness’ (BGE 258).
Here Nietzsche glosses Henry Walter Bates’ analysis of a particular plant species – the Sipo Matador or Murdering Creeper (Bates [1863] 1941). Significantly in his analysis of the Murdering Creeper Bates explicitly employed a Darwinian account of evolution in terms of struggle for existence regulated by natural selection. Bates identifies nature with a ‘ruthless’ struggle for existence between individuals and species in competition for limited resources. ‘In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its fellow, struggling upwards towards light and air — branch, and leaf, and stem — regardless of its neighbours. Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. There is one kind of parasitic tree, very common near Para, which exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the Sipo Matador, or the Murderer Liana’ (Bates 1863, p. 127).
Bates observes the creeper’s success depends on exploiting other species because ‘its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth; it is obliged, therefore, to support itself on a tree of another species’ (Bates 1863, p. 127). However, as Bates remarks, this is typical of parasitic trees and plants. Why did Bates pick out the Sipo Matador as especially worthy of note and why did Nietzsche identify this particular creeper as analogous to the proper functioning of an aristocracy? What makes the Sipo Matador appear as ‘peculiar’ and ‘disagreeable,’ as Bates explains, is the particularly extreme way it exploits other tree species (Bates 1863, p. 127). Ultimately this parasite murders its ‘host.’ For this reason Bates describes the Sipo Matador’s host as a victim. Bates calls it the ‘murdering creeper’ because as it grows larger and flourishes, ‘rearing its crown of foliage to the sky,’ it kills its victim by stopping the flow of its sap (Bates 1863, p. 127). In the peculiar case of Sipo Matador, every move towards the ‘fulfilment’ of its life depends on its victim moving closer to death. It flourishes by murdering its host/victim. It lives by killing another. However, since the murdering Sipo cannot bear its own weight the death of its victim also spells its imminent demise: ‘The strange spectacle then remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. Its ends have been served—it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and disseminated its kind; and now, when the dead trunk moulders away, its own end approaches; its support is gone, and itself also falls’ (Bates 1863, p. 127).
Importantly, Bates identifies the Sipo Matador as the perfect illustration of the Darwinian struggle for existence. ‘The Murderer Sipo’ he claims ‘merely exhibits, in a more conspicuous manner than usual, the struggle which necessarily exists amongst vegetable forms in these crowded forests. . . . All species entail in their successful struggles the injury or destruction of many of their neighbours or supporters, but the process is not in others so speaking to the eye as it is in the case of the Matador. . . . The competition amongst organised beings has been prominently brought forth in Darwin’s “Origin of Species”; it is a fact which must be always kept in view in studying these subjects’ (Bates 1863, pp. 127–8).
Nietzsche’s account of aristocracy’s conditions of existence replicates Bates’ Darwinian analysis of parasitic plants: in order to flourish the highest human types must, like the murdering creeper, sacrifice others for their own advancement. Nietzsche then identifies aristocracy as analogous to this murderous parasite. On this view, aristocracies elevate themselves not simply by utilizing lower strata for their own ends, but by extinguishing their host/victim in the process of achieving their own full flourishing. It is for this reason that he emphasizes that aristocracies ‘sacrifice,’ ‘lower’ and ‘reduce’ those it enslaves to its service (BGE 258). Nietzsche’s Darwinian framing of the relationship between higher and lower strata gives the lie to the idea that he believes these strata can co-exist with one another (see Hatab 2008). Indeed, as his Sipo Matador analogy suggests, Nietzsche believes the full flourishing of the higher may ultimately require the annihilation of the lower strata.
Yet Nietzsche claims that aristocracies can fail through ‘corruption’ – their loss of the fundamental faith that their own elevation is the meaning or purpose of society, which justifies the sacrifice of ‘untold beings.’ Nietzsche identifies this faith as built on ‘the foundation of affects, which is called “life”’ (BGE 258). Whereas in non-human nature, the untrammelled struggle for existence goes on apace, and individuals and species are immune to such corruption, in human society, Nietzsche identifies the possibility of the ‘corruption’ of ‘the foundation of affects’: the highest types come to conceive themselves as mere functionaries of society rather than its ultimate goal (BGE 258). Nietzsche aims to establish a political therapy that treats this corruption of higher forms of life. In his late works, then, Nietzsche’s therapy focuses on healing higher types of this corruption so that they can pursue their own flourishing in the same manner as the Sipo Matador.
Nietzsche political therapy then only aims to cure rare, strong types of the species who are ‘emasculated’ by what calls slave morality. It principally aims to prevent the strong from endorsing the ‘sinister’ idea that the suffering of the weak is avoidable and undeserved and that they should minister to the sick and take responsibility for preventing their suffering. It aims to prevent them from contracting from the weak their diseases. Nietzsche embodies this political therapy in the Genealogy of Morals. It aims to cure the rare healthy types of the contagion of compassion and equality. Undoubtedly Nietzsche uses non-cognitive resources to trigger in ‘higher’ types disgust with ‘lower’ types. Nietzsche peppers the Genealogy with a hyperbolic rhetoric that seeks to inspire in its readers nausea (Ekel) at the sight and sound of ‘lesser,’ suffering types (Tevenar, forthcoming). Nausea at the weak, he implies, can catalyse in higher types the desire to contest the evaluative judgement that lesser types warrant their compassion.
Nietzsche complements this non-cognitive rhetorical suasion with a therapy that challenges the cognitive foundations of compassion. Nietzsche suggests that the weak transmit their disease to the strong by cognitive means: so-called ‘slavish’ moral beliefs and evaluations. In Genealogy Nietzsche cashes out his claim that morality is a strategy that species use to elude their enemies or to prey on others (D 26). Nietzsche conceives slave morality as a predatory practice: it enables the so-called weak to exploit the strong for their own protection. Nietzsche’s political therapy aims to free higher types from the snares and corruptions of this predatory morality.
In the Genealogy Nietzsche identifies this predatory morality with a number of propositions and evaluations: for example, the concept of freedom that underpins the notion of moral responsibility; the concept of equality that underpins the notion of equal rights; and the concept of ‘happiness’ that underpins the judgement that suffering is evil. Taken together these three concepts are the cognitive conditions that make it possible for the strong to condemn themselves for harming the weak and to hold themselves responsible for preventing this harm. Nietzsche’s genealogy aims to counteract the corruption of the strong by showing them how this contemporary ‘morality’ has its genesis in the needs of the weak for conditions of existence that systematically undermine their own conditions of existence. As a naturalist Nietzsche wants to demonstrate to them first the ‘moralities’ are conditions of existence (GS 7), and second that contemporary ‘slave’ morality is the condition of existence that sustain our species’ sickest types at the expense of the healthiest. If, therefore, the strong and healthy want a morality that supports their conditions of existence they must jettison slave morality. As a political therapy Nietzsche’s genealogy aims to eliminate their endorsement of concepts central to slave morality that obstruct their flourishing – responsibility, equality and ‘happiness’ – so that they can formulate and live according to a morality that is conducive to their own flourishing. His philosophical therapy for the rare, higher types proceeds by a genealogical re-evaluation of slave morality and a series of exercises that aim to heighten their sense of the ‘pathos of distance’ between themselves and hoi polloi.
In this context, Nietzsche encourages higher types to use ‘physics’ or the ancient exercise of the view from above to achieve this equanimity in the face of nature’s cruelty towards the weaker. Nietzsche assumes that in order to incorporate this genealogical knowledge of the conditions of existence they require therapeutic exercises. In this regard Nietzsche takes a leaf out of the Stoic philosophy: he exhorts higher, ascending types to contemplate the grand economy of the whole and learn to laugh at (rather than lament) the grand and violent struggle for life and power (Ure 2013a, 2013b). However, unlike Stoics who use the view from above to see how every part belongs to a divine or rationally harmonious whole, Nietzsche deploys evolutionary knowledge to see how the enhancement of the whole requires the sacrifice or elimination of some of its parts. From this biological view from above they can see that sacrificing the many is a necessary condition of species’ flourishing. The bio-political goal of Nietzsche’s therapy is to enable so-called higher types to overcome the emotional corruption that prevents them from pursuing their own flourishing at the expense of lesser types. We can describe this as a neo-Stoic therapy insofar as like the ancient therapy it still aims to enable individuals (or at least higher individuals) to affirm necessity. However, Nietzsche’s neo-Stoic therapy transforms the notion of necessity: he no longer conceives events as necessary parts of a divine or rational whole, as the Stoics did, but as necessary parts of ongoing biological agon between strong and weak members of the species. Nietzsche’s neo-Stoic therapy aims to enable higher type to affirm the necessity of this biological agon and in doing so to ensure their optimal conditions of existence. The overarching goal of this therapy, therefore, is to establish the conditions necessary for the flourishing of the species’ highest types. The key to Nietzsche’s therapy lies in enabling these higher types to overcome the ‘sinister’ disease of compassion that motivates them to try to limit or eliminate agon for the sake of protecting the weak (GM P 5).6
Nietzsche’s bio-political programme then radically transforms his view of the scope, aim and content of his philosophical therapy. First, rather than developing a philosophical therapy for all, he draws on the evolutionary idea that some variations are ‘fitter’ (stronger, nobler, ascending lines) than others to argue that therapy should only be for these fitter individuals who have the biological potential to facilitate the species’ enhancement. If the political goal is the species’ flourishing then therapy ought only to apply to those who contribute to this end. Since Nietzsche accords value to individuals terms of their contribution to the species’ advancement, and this capacity, so he assumes, is unevenly distributed, he believes it is reasonable to also accord rights and claims unevenly. Since from the evolutionary perspective many individuals are likely to be unfavourable variations that detract from or limit the species’ capacities their political rights should be strictly limited so they either serve or do not encroach on those blessed by good fortune. From this perspective, Nietzsche argues it is just for the few rare lucky hits to exploit the many for the sake of fully realizing their natural potential. Nietzsche’s bio-politics casts aside the Enlightenment conception of individuals as citizens with the inalienable political rights or rights to self-determination and replaces it with a conception of individuals as members of a species whose value resides in their contribution to the species as a whole (Esposito 2008). In this context Nietzsche assumes that it is legitimate to measure individual’s worth in terms of their contribution to the species’ health and flourishing (rather than in terms of their own individual flourishing) and that against this measure some individuals are worth far less than others.7 ‘[The healthy’s] right to exist, the priority of the bell with the clear ring over the discordant and cracked one’ he asserts ‘is clearly a thousand times greater: they alone are the guarantors of the future’ (GM III: 14). The aim of Nietzsche’s philosophical therapy shifts from seeking to help all individuals achieve maximal human flourishing to seeking to help the few lucky hits achieve maximal flourishing, even at the expense of diminishing, exploiting or sacrificing the weak.
Second, Nietzsche’s philosophical therapy no longer seeks to enable all individuals to maintain equanimity in the face of misfortune, but to free the rare lucky hits from one of the main impediments to their flourishing: the emotional distress caused by their false ‘moral’ judgements, which commit them to feeling with and ministering to the sick and weak. From the middle to the late works Nietzsche shifts from a philosophical therapy concerned with healing all individuals and enabling them to love their fate to a political therapy concerned with ensuring that rare individuals can remain undisturbed by the harmful effects of their actions on the weak and sick. Nietzsche’s Darwinian inspired view from above is the therapeutic exercise meant to cure their disease of compassion.
4 Conclusion
We have seen how Smith and Nietzsche utilize Stoic therapies for very different political ends. Smith deploys Stoic therapies for the purposes of social harmony and co-ordination. In his so-called middle works Nietzsche, by contrast, initially draws on Hellenistic therapies as an integral aspect of his reinvention of ancient ethical perfectionism. He identifies Stoic therapies as cures for the emotional distress that prevents individuals from responding with equanimity to all the turns of fortune’s wheel. However, as we have seen, in the 1880s Nietzsche radically transforms the scope and purpose of his philosophical therapy as he integrates evolutionary theories into his moral analysis and political theory. In his late works, Nietzsche folds his neo-Stoic therapy into a ‘bio-political’ programme or what some have called a negative or totalitarian bio-politics (Esposito 2008; Lemm 2008). Here he deploys a neo-Stoic political therapy to cure higher types of the moral corruption that prevents them from fully exercising their aristocratic ‘rights’ and in doing so enhancing the species’ capacities. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals embodies this political therapy.
However, Nietzsche was mistaken to think that evolutionary naturalism is necessarily tied to or compatible with aristocratic radicalism. Indeed, following Adam Smith’s inspiration, evolutionary biologists from Darwin to De Waal have demonstrated that political community is contingent on the evolution of sympathy (De Waal 2009, p. 15; Ure 2013b). One of the lessons we might learn from this study of competing political therapies is that if we are to develop an affirmative bio-politics we need to investigate the political and moral significance of precisely those capacities and sentiments that Smith applauded and Nietzsche despised: empathy, sympathy and compassion.
Notes
1 On the differences between the Greco-Roman and Christian models of ‘psychagogy’ or the transmission of a truth whose function is to transform the mode of being of the subject to whom it is addressed see Foucault (2005, pp. 408–9).
2 Here I concentrate on Nietzsche’s uses and abuses of the Stoic model of philosophical therapy. It is important to acknowledge, however, that in the middle works he takes an eclectic stance towards Hellenistic therapies. ‘(W)e will not hesitate to adopt a Stoic recipe’ as he puts ‘just because we have profited in the past from Epicurean recipes’ (KSA 9, 15(59)).
3 Nietzsche uses the idea of discharge (Entladungen) or catharsis in a narrow sense. By this he means purging ‘affects’ rather than clarifying emotions of pity and fear.
4 Brobjer (2003) demonstrates that in 1880/1881 Nietzsche carefully read, annotated and drew on Epictetus’ Handbook as his primary source on Stoic philosophy.
5 I use the term quasi-Darwinian here to indicate that in some places Nietzsche draws on conventional Darwinian evolutionary arguments in an attempt to bolster his aristocratic radicalism whereas in other places he does this by developing his own evolutionary arguments based on the metaphysical notion of the will to power. Here I focus on Nietzsche’s efforts to use Darwinian theory to support his aristocratic radicalism.
6 Nietzsche acknowledges that under exceptional conditions higher types might limit agon between the strong and weak for the purpose of creating a larger unit of strength, but not for the purpose of protecting the weak and suffering. From the most ‘advanced biological standpoint’ as he puts it, the law should be conceived as a weapon in a fight between parties, not as a means of achieving peace (GM II: 11).
7 In GS 1 Nietzsche complains that moral preachers believe that ‘an individual is always an individual, something first, last and tremendous; for him there are no species, sums or zeroes’. For Nietzsche, by contrast, there are species, sums and zeroes: that is, in the biological agon some individuals have numerical value (favourable variations), while others are zeroes (unfavourable variations).
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