1
Paul Patton
Justice, according to Rawls, is the first virtue of social institutions, in the same way that truth is the first virtue of systems of thought (Rawls 1999, p. 3). A society is ‘well-ordered,’ he argues, when there is a political conception of justice on which all reasonable citizens can agree, when its basic institutions are effectively regulated by a public conception of justice, and when citizens have an effective sense of justice that enables them to understand and apply the principles of justice (Rawls 2005, p. 35). It follows that the legitimacy of our social institutions, including our form of government, depends on their being just. The exercise of political power is legitimate only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution that embodies the principles of an agreed political conception of justice (Rawls 2005, p. 137).
Rawls distinguishes particular public conceptions of justice, such as his own conception of justice as fairness, from concepts of social justice that set out general principles for the assignment of rights and duties and the distribution of the benefits of social life. For the modern citizens of democratic and liberal societies, whose considered intuitions about what is just form the raw material of Rawls’s conception or theory of justice, these basic principles include avoidance of ‘arbitrary distinctions’ between persons in the assignment of basic rights and duties, and the establishment of a ‘proper balance’ between competing claims to the advantages of social life’ (Rawls 1999, p. 5; 2005, p. 14). While he does suggest that this concept tallies with traditional views of justice such as Aristotle’s, Rawls does not inquire further into the origins of our concept of justice. More generally, he is less interested in the historical character of our concept and conceptions of justice. By contrast, if we are interested in the possibility that our conceptions and even our concept of justice might change, then it is important to understand their history. If we are interested in the future of justice, genealogical inquiry into its origins can provide us with resources for thinking about it differently.
Nietzsche is a species perfectionist, interested in the future of the human sense of justice and forms of social and political order.1 Moreover, he is committed to an historical approach to the concepts and conceptions that inform social and political life. He denies the possibility of defining such concepts – ‘only something which has no history can be defined’ (GM II: 13) – in favour of genealogical enquiry into their origins. In Human, All Too Human, Daybreak and On the Genealogy of Morality, he provides elements of a speculative account of the origins of justice grounded in a historical conception of human nature understood in terms of the theory that ‘a power-will is acted out in all that happens’ (GM II: 12). Although he is often considered to be an anti-democratic if not an anti-political thinker, Nietzsche’s comments on democratic political organization include some highly favourable judgments, particularly in writings around 1880.2 In this chapter, I will focus on these comments in order to argue that he provides the bases for a novel interpretation of the sources and possible future development of a democracy ‘yet to come’ (HH 293).
1 Origins of justice
In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche suggests that justice originates between parties of approximately equal power, ‘where there is no clearly recognizable superiority of force and a contest would result in mutual injury producing no decisive outcome’ (HH 92). Under these circumstances, it makes more sense for both parties to negotiate over the demands of each party with a view to reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement, thereby avoiding conflict that would only lead to injury with no assurance of a beneficial outcome on either side. Understood in this manner, justice is based on the egoism that is expressed in the thought: ‘to what end should I injure myself uselessly and perhaps even then not achieve my goal?’ (HH 92).
From Nietzsche’s genealogical point of view, the egoistic origin of moral virtues such as justice does not mean that they do not serve the interests of all parties concerned, nor that they cannot over time come to appear unegoistic. In The Wanderer And His Shadow, he offers a parallel account of the manner in which unselfish dealings with others could have come to acquire a positive evaluation. Neighbouring chieftains who had long been in conflict with one another come to a peaceful agreement because of the intervention of a third party who threatens to side with whoever is the victim of aggression by the other, thereby convincing both to keep the peace. As a result, the former enemies enter into peaceful relations of trade and mutual assistance that enhance their condition in a variety of ways:
They both saw with astonishment how their prosperity and wellbeing suddenly increased, how each had in his neighbour a willing trading partner instead of a crafty or openly mocking illdoer, how each could even assist and rescue the other in times of need instead of exploiting and augmenting this need of his neighbour as heretofore. (WS 190)
Each party saw only the behaviour of the other, which they called unselfish and considered a virtue because of the benefits they derived from it. In this manner, on the basis of perceived self-interest, the virtue of unselfish behaviour became acknowledged. It was not that unselfish behaviour had not previously occurred in private or on a small scale, but rather that it only became acknowledged as a virtue when
for the first time it was painted on a wall in large letters legible to the whole community. The moral qualities are recognized as virtues, accorded value and an honoured name, and recommended for acquisition only from the moment when they have visibly determined the fate and fortune of whole societies. (WS 190)
So it is with justice, according to Nietzsche’s account. The high value placed on this apparently unegoistic virtue increases over time as a consequence both of the benefits it brings to the community and of the efforts to protect and maintain it. Its value increases as does the value of every highly valued thing:
For something highly valued is striven for, imitated, multiplied through sacrifice, and grows as the worth of the toil and zeal expended by each individual is added to the worth of the valued thing. (HH 92)
Nietzsche’s genealogies of justice, unselfish behaviour and other social virtues remain firmly anchored in a conception of human nature as fundamentally self-interested. However, there is more to his conception of human self-interest and the mechanism by which this leads to just and fair dealings between individuals and groups. First, because the concept of justice originates in negotiation between parties of approximately equal power, it implies an understanding of the bases of agreement between parties with different or conflicting interests: ‘the characteristic of exchange is the original characteristic of justice’ (HH 92). Second, the practice of negotiation implies an understanding of the process of give and take, or what Nietzsche refers to as requital (Vergeltung). It follows that: ‘Justice is thus requital and exchange under the presupposition of an approximately equal power position’ (HH 92). On the Genealogy of Morality reiterates the connection between justice and exchange in pointing to the etymological link between Schuld (guilt) and Schulden (debts), and in suggesting that the origins of punishment included the idea that every injury could be compensated by an equivalent amount of suffering inflicted on the perpetrator (GM II: 4).
In Human, All Too Human, the reference to requital and exchange leads Nietzsche to invoke two other moral sentiments that belong to the same domain as justice, namely revenge and gratitude: ‘revenge therefore belongs originally within the domain of justice, it is an exchange. Gratitude likewise’ (HH 92). However, when we turn to his analyses of these phenomena, the idea of justice as a relationship involving requital and exchange between parties of approximately equal power is further complicated by the introduction of the conception of individuals as ‘spheres of power.’ This is how Nietzsche explains the sentiments of gratitude and revenge:
The reason the man of power is grateful is this. His benefactor has, through the help he has given him, as it were laid hands on the sphere of the man of power and intruded into it (an der Sphäre des Mächtigen gleichsam vergriffen und sich in sie engedrängt): now, by way of requital, the man of power in turn lays hands on the sphere of his benefactor through the act of gratitude. It is a milder form of revenge. (HH 44)
Nietzsche’s analyses of gratitude and revenge, and by implication of the human sense of justice, in terms of the sphere of power that constitutes the individual social agent requires further explanation. This will be provided in the next section devoted to his theory of will to power and the role played in this theory, insofar as it applies to human beings, by the concept of the feeling of power. For the moment, however, it is important to note the complexity of the origins of justice as he explains them. These include the capacity for requital and exchange, the equality of power or rather the perceived equality of power (which may or may not accurately reflect the actual balance of forces in a given relationship), and the capacity for a feeling of power, which refers us to the kind of agency involved in human interactions.
2 Power and the feeling of power
At the time of writing Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche had not presented in explicit form his theory of the will to power.3 Applied to the organic world, this theory does not claim that all things seek power over their environment, or that they seek self-preservation, but rather that everything seeks to exercise or express its own distinctive capacities. Whether or not that leads to self-preservation or to power over other things will depend not only on the intrinsic capacities of the body concerned, but also on the environment in which it seeks to exercise its power. As he later writes:
A living thing desires above all to vent its strength – life as such is will to power – self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it. (BGE 13)
Applied to the human animal, this theory takes on a further dimension by virtue of the fact that, to a greater degree than all other living things, human beings are conscious of and affected by their actions. The fact that they are conscious of their actions means that they act in the light of particular ways of understanding or describing the meaning, goals and content of their actions. This implies that there is an inescapable interpretative element in all human action. The fact that human beings are conscious of and affected by their actions further implies that there is a particular kind of feedback loop between an agent’s actions and the agent’s self-esteem or self-respect.4 When the action is misdirected or blocked the agent experiences a feeling of impotence or powerlessness. When it succeeds, or is believed to have succeeded, the agent experiences a feeling of power. Nietzsche’s mature doctrine of the will to power as it applies to human beings is summed up in the following passage from On The Genealogy of Morality:
Every animal . . . instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions in which it can fully express its power and achieve its maximal feeling of power. (GM III: 7 translation modified)
Even though he only explicitly formulated this doctrine some years later, the crucial role of the feeling of power is implicit in the analyses of human social interaction undertaken in Human, All Too Human and Daybreak. At the outset of Human, All Too Human, after calling for a chemistry of the moral, religious and aesthetic sensations and ‘all the agitations we experience within ourselves in cultural and social intercourse, and indeed even when we are alone,’ Nietzsche advances the hypothesis that there are no actions that are either completely egoistic or completely disinterested: there are only sublimations ‘in which the basic element seems almost to have dispersed and reveals itself only under the most painstaking observation’ (HH 1). He does not immediately say what he takes to be this ‘basic element’ in all human actions, but the answer becomes apparent in the course of his analyses of the affects that accompany different forms of social interaction. Even though his terminology is not yet fixed, it is power, or more precisely the awareness of one’s power that comes through exercising it over others or over oneself.
For example, he suggests that the objective of so-called wicked acts is not so much the suffering of others but rather ‘our own enjoyment, for example the enjoyment of the feeling of revenge or of a powerful excitation of the nerves’ (HH 103). In the next passage, he argues that there is no difference between a wicked act that causes harm to others and an act of self-defence insofar as the act is accompanied by a pleasure or ‘feeling of one’s own power, of one’s own strong excitation’ (HH 104). Eventually, he answers the question raised at the outset concerning the basic element in all human actions by suggesting that:
It is the individual’s sole desire for self-enjoyment (together with the fear of losing it) which gratifies itself in every instance, let a man act as he can, that is to say as he must: whether his deeds be those of vanity, revenge, pleasure, utility, malice, cunning, or those of sacrifice, sympathy, knowledge. (HH 107)
All of these formulations amount to early versions of what he later refers to as the ‘feeling of power,’ where this is not a simple psychological state but a feeling bound up with experience of agency on the part of complex, self-conscious human animals. This feeling is the decisive element in many of his analyses of human actions throughout Human, All Too Human. For example, in addition to the analysis of gratitude and revenge (HH 44), the discussion of the desire to excite pity in others (HH 50) relies on a conception of human beings as subjects endowed with a certain degree of power and striving to achieve or restore the feeling of their own power. The desire to incite pity in others, on the part of those who suffer, arises because of the affect that accompanies successful incitation. Nietzsche refers here to the feeling of superiority which accompanies the demonstration that, whatever their misfortune, the one arousing pity still has the power to elicit this response from others. This feeling of superiority provides ‘a sort of pleasure’ and it follows that the thirst for pity is ‘a thirst for self-enjoyment’ at the expense of one’s fellows (HH 50). In a later passage, he refers simply to a ‘pleasure of gratification in the exercise of power’ (HH 103).
In Daybreak, too, the feeling of power is explicitly invoked in Nietzsche’s analyses of a variety of human actions and attitudes. For example, he suggests that the pleasure obtained from practising or witnessing cruelty to other animals, ‘one of the oldest festive joys of mankind,’ can be understood as a form of gratification of the feeling of power (D 18).5 The phenomenon of blaming others for one’s failure can similarly be understood: ‘for failure brings with it a depression of spirits against which the sole remedy is instinctively applied: a new excitation of the feeling of power’ (D 140). The criticism of the preceding generation by a younger generation may also be understood in these terms, since ‘in criticizing it enjoys the first fruits of the feeling of power’ (D 176). So too in the case of those moments in history when ‘grand politics’ occupies centre stage and people are ready to stake their lives, their property and their conscience on the success of a particular cause: ‘the strongest tide which carries them forward is the need for the feeling of power’ (D 189). The drive to accumulate wealth that has become such an important feature of modern commercial society may be understood as ‘that which now gives the highest feeling of power and good conscience’ (D 204). As these examples suggest, the importance of Nietzsche’s will to power hypothesis for our understanding of human actions cannot be underestimated. They are summed up in his suggestion that, because for so much of human history it was believed that natural phenomena were endowed with purpose and the power to frustrate human endeavours, and because the feeling of impotence was so widely and strongly felt, the feeling of power has become humankind’s strongest propensity: ‘the means discovered for creating this feeling almost constitute the history of culture’ (D 23).
3 Rights, power and the feeling of power
In The Wanderer And His Shadow, Nietzsche suggests that a right is a kind of power and that this is one reason that many fail to assert rights to which they are entitled: effort and in some cases courage is required to assert one’s rights (WS 251). In Daybreak, he offers a more developed account of the origin of rights and duties in which rights are defined as recognized and guaranteed degrees of power (D 112). In accordance with the familiar reciprocity of rights and duties, our duties are the rights that others acquire over us. These arise on the basis of a capacity for requital and exchange similar to that identified among the sources of justice. Others acquire such rights, he argues, ‘by taking us to be capable of contracting and requiting, by positing us as similar and equal to them’ (D 112). His examples of the ways in which others do this to fellow citizens allude to those things that Socrates admits having been given by society, such as being reared, educated and supported, being entrusted with the welfare of others and given a share in the advantages of social life (Crito 50d–e, 51d–e). Socrates further admits that because he has accepted these things and continued to live in a society governed by law, he has contracted to repay the debt incurred by honouring the duties imposed on him by the law. In the same way, Nietzsche argues, we fulfil our duty when ‘we give back in the measure in which we have been given to’ (D 112).6
His account of the origin of our rights over others relies on the same conception of relationships of requital and exchange. My rights ‘are that part of my power which others have not merely conceded me, but which they wish me to preserve’ (D 112). In the case of rights that originate between parties of approximately equal power, others might concede certain powers to me on the basis of anticipated requital and exchange of equivalents. This might take the form of my conceding the same powers to them, hence protecting their rights. Alternatively, they might consider struggle with me to be perilous and potentially to no advantage, thereby relying on the same egoistic calculation that underlies the sense of justice. Or finally, they might wish me to retain certain powers to preserve the possibility of an alliance against third parties.
The situation is different in cases of unequal power, where other motivations may prevail. For example, where one party has more than enough power to maintain a relation of domination over another, they might donate some of it to the weaker party. In doing so, they not only presuppose ‘a weak feeling of power in him who thus lets himself be donated to,’ as Nietzsche suggests, but they also perpetuate the weak feeling of power and thereby reinforce the hierarchical relationship (D 112). In Human, All Too Human, he proposed an economic motive for the powerful to respect the rights of those conquered or enslaved in pointing out that the latter still possess at least the power to destroy themselves, thereby inflicting a loss on the conqueror or the slave master (HH 93).
There is a further dimension to Nietzsche’s analysis of the origins of rights and duties which brings this into close alignment with his account of the origin of justice, namely the fact that it also relies on a conception of the agents involved as not merely subjects of power but also subjects endowed with a capacity for the feeling of power. When we honour our duties to others, doing something for them in return for what they have done for us, he argues:
What we are doing is restoring our self-regard – for in doing something for us, these others have impinged upon our sphere of power, and would have continued to have a hand in it if we did not with the performance of our ‘duty’ practise a requital, that is to say impinge upon their power. (D 112)
For this reason, Nietzsche qualifies his initial definition of rights as recognized and guaranteed degrees of power by specifying that the rights of others ‘constitute a concession on the part of our feeling of power to the feeling of power of those others’ (D 112). His analysis of the origins of rights and duties thus proceeds, on the assumption that these involve relations between individuals conceived as ‘spheres of power,’ where this involves a capacity to be affected by the exercise of one’s own power as well as by the impact of the power of others. It also involves beliefs about one’s own power and that of others. As Nietzsche points out, the rights of others relate only to ‘that which they believe lies within our power, provided it is the same thing we believe lies within our power’ (D 112). This implies that rights and corresponding duties only arise within a context of shared beliefs about the powers of those involved. Among the consequences of this view, it follows that rights are subject to change as those shared beliefs change. Human beings are acutely sensitive to changes in the perceived relations of power that obtain between themselves and others. That is one of the reasons that rights may come to exist where they did not before, or go out of existence where they had previously existed.
4 Democracy and the state
In the abbreviated genealogy of rights and duties in Daybreak, as in the analyses of justice, gratitude and revenge in Human, All Too Human, we encounter the logic of requital and exchange along with the conception of the bearers of rights and duties as subjects of both power and the feeling of power. On this basis, Nietzsche offers an account of the emergence of social relations involving justice and of the value of such relations. Just relations and the associated rights and duties that these imply within civil or political societies therefore can be supposed to have emerged between individuals and groups seeking to express their own power and to achieve a maximal feeling of power. Nietzsche’s discussion of the origin of rights and duties does not consider the late modern idea of democratic societies governed by means of laws, where it is assumed not only that all citizens are equal before the law but also that they participate equally in the formation of new laws. However, his conception of rights as recognized and guaranteed degrees of power is prima facie applicable to this form of political society. The basic civil and political rights, which form the basis of democratic government, would amount to the ‘degrees of power’ that all citizens would agree to accord one another. These degrees of power would include those necessary for the conduct of government where this is ultimately a matter of the ways in which citizens collectively exercise coercive power over one another. They would include not only the protection of person and property but also freedoms of speech and opinion, rights to participation in the political process and so on. As such, these rights provide much of the framework of a constitutional democracy.
Considered in the light of contemporary liberal conceptions of justice, the question arises whether it is possible to extend Nietzsche’s account of the origins of justice to encompass its modern democratic form. Can we envisage a society in which the affirmation of the equal rights of all citizens is a means to the feeling of power for individuals and the community as a whole? Nietzsche’s writings contain tantalizing suggestions that he thought this might be possible. For example, in On the Genealogy of Morals he points out that as the power and self-confidence of a community grows, so does its capacity to take lightly the offences of individuals: its penal law becomes more lenient. On this basis, he suggests that
It is not impossible to imagine society so conscious of its power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury available to it, – that of letting its malefactors go unpunished. ‘What do I care about my parasites’ it could say, ‘let them live and flourish: I am strong enough for that!’ (GM II: 10)
This overcoming of justice in the penal sphere would amount to the abolition of one of the essential functions of the state hitherto, namely the power to punish. Elsewhere, in a long passage in Human, All Too Human, devoted to the relationship between religion and government, he imagines a form of society in which all of the essential functions of the state have been taken over by another ‘organizing power.’ He views the emergence of democracy in European modernity in a historical perspective that enables him to see the fundamental changes in the nature and in the perception of government that this implies. He argues that ‘absolute tutelary government’ which regarded itself as the guardian of the people would always want religion to continue, at least so long as it fully understood the benefits that religion provides. These include calming the populace and helping them to deal with calamities, whether natural or social, as well as ensuring civil peace. Religion ‘quietens the heart of the individual in times of loss, deprivation, fear, distrust’ and it also ‘guarantees a calm, patient, trusting disposition among the masses’ (HH 472). It also ensures the legitimacy of the state itself since without the assistance of priests ‘even now no power can become “legitimate”: as Napoleon grasped’ (HH 472).
By contrast, a very different dynamic takes over once government is no longer considered to stand above and apart from the people, but is regarded merely as an expression of the will of the people. Henceforth, ‘the attitude towards religion adopted by the government can only be the same as that adopted towards it by the people’ (HH 472). Once the people come to hold a range of diverse and conflicting attitudes towards religion, as well as a plurality of conflicting religious beliefs, the state will have no option but to treat religion as a private matter. The secularization of the state will in turn unleash a dynamic of increased religious diversity on the one hand, and increasing hostility towards religion on the part of the state and its irreligious supporters on the other. Religious groups will turn against the state and become hostile towards it. This will only further increase conflict between the forces of religion and secularism and undermine the ‘attitude of veneration and piety’ towards the state that hitherto prevailed (HH 472).
Over time, assuming that the enlightened forces opposed to religion prevail, this will lead to decline in the authority of the state and thereby its effectiveness as an institution of government. It will become the site of constant political struggle between contending parties, incapable of embarking on projects that require long-term investment or commitment.
Finally – one can say this with certainty – distrust of all government, insight into the uselessness and destructiveness of these short-winded struggles will impel men to a quite novel resolve: the resolve to do away with the concept of the state, to the abolition of the distinction between private and public. Private companies will step by step absorb the business of the state: even the most resistant remainder of what was formerly the work of government (for example its activities designed to protect the private person from the private person) will in the long run be taken care of by private contractors. Disregard for and the decline and death of the state, the liberation of the private person (I take care not to say: of the individual), is the consequence of the democratic conception of the state; it is in this that its mission lies. (HH 472)
Commentators on this passage have a tendency to stop at this point and to suppose that Nietzsche simply welcomes the decline and death of the state.7 Yet these are not his final words on the subject. He presents the state in a longer-term historical perspective as merely one among many ‘organizing powers’ that have held sway for periods in the history of humanity in various parts of the world. Others include the racial clan, the family and the Greek polis.8 How many such organizing powers has humankind not seen die out? Far from sustaining an anti-political view, his long-term historical perspective enables him to envisage a future in which some other form of ‘organizing power’ will emerge:
The prudence and self-interest of men are of all their qualities the best developed; if the state is no longer equal to the demands of these forces then the last thing that will ensue is chaos: an invention more suited to their purpose than the state was will gain victory over the state. (HH 472)
Nietzsche is reluctant to speculate on the form that this new invention might take. However, it is worth noting that he is well aware of the distinction between government, as the work of some organizing power, and the state as a particular form of government that presupposes an authority over and apart from the people who are governed. In an earlier passage in Human, All Too Human, he noted that historically, the relation of government to the governed was seen as a relation between ‘two distinct spheres of power’ that resembled a range of other hierarchical relations in society: between teachers and pupils, masters and servants, fathers and families and so on (HH 450). He contrasts this with the ‘hitherto unhistorical and arbitrary, if nonetheless more logical’ conception of government as ‘nothing but an organ of the people’ and notes that its widespread acceptance implies change in the nature of these other social relations as well (HH 450).
5 Democracy and justice
Paragraph 275 of The Wanderer And His Shadow is one of Nietzsche’s more positive assessments of the democratization of Europe. He argues that this process is irresistible because any opposition to it now has to employ ‘precisely the means which the democratic idea first placed in everyone’s hands,’ namely it has to appeal to the judgement and will of those affected by it (WS 275). More importantly, he argues that it is valuable because of the ‘cyclopean’ institution building that serves to separate European modernity from the Middle Ages. The institutions that accompany the advent of democratic society are described as ‘prophylactic measures’ by means of which the foundations of a future, higher form of society are laid ‘so that the future can safely build upon them’ (WS 275). Nietzsche suggests that by these measures
We make it henceforth impossible for the fruitful fields of culture again to be destroyed overnight by wild and senseless torrents! We erect stone dams and protective walls against barbarians, against pestilence, against physical and spiritual enslavement! (WS 275)
Although he does not spell out precisely the nature of these stone dams and protective walls, we can suppose that they include the fundamental constitutional and legal architecture of a just and democratic society. The experience of episodes in the course of the twentieth century when forms of physical and spiritual enslavement re-emerged because these were not present gives us some indication of what is involved, namely freedoms of conscience and opinion, freedom of association, the protection of person and property and an independent judiciary to ensure that these protections really do amount to a rule of law.
Nietzsche’s historical speculations in Human, All Too Human about the consequences of democratic institutions for modern society and government leave us with two significant resources with which to address the possibility of a more just and thoroughgoing democracy on the basis of his conception of the will to power and the dynamics that it unleashed in human history. First, he distinguishes between the state, understood as a distinct sphere of power over and above the power of those governed, and government, understood as the means by which citizens collectively exercise power over one another. Second, he recognizes that the evolution of modern society will inevitably lead to a plurality of religious, philosophical and moral views. In other words, effective and stable democratic government will no longer be able to expect that everyone will have the same opinions and objectives but will have to take into account a plurality of conceptions of the good.
A fundamental principle of modern liberal conceptions of democracy is what we might call an egalitarianism of conceptions of the good. Subject to their respecting the rights of others, individuals have the right to their own conception of the good and the right to live in accordance with their own conception of what makes a life worthwhile or at least endurable. This is often expressed in terms of the idea that individual lives should be lived from the inside. People should not be beholden to external authorities to tell them how to live. Nietzsche endorses the core of this principle when he writes that:
. . . if the purpose of all politics really is to make life endurable for as many as possible, then these as-many-as-possible are entitled to determine what they understand by an endurable life; if they trust to their intellect also to discover the right means of attaining this goal, what good is there in doubting it? They want for once to forge for themselves their own fortunes and misfortunes; and if this feeling of self-determination, pride in the five or six ideas their head contains and brings forth, in fact renders their life so pleasant to them they are happy to bear the calamitous consequences of their narrow-mindedness, there is little to be objected to, always presupposing that this narrow-mindedness does not go so far as to demand that everything should become politics in this sense, that everyone should live and work according to such a standard. (HH 438)
Of course, Nietzsche’s own view is that it is not the purpose of all politics to make life endurable for as many as possible. His conception of ‘grand politics’ aims at something altogether different, namely the higher power and splendour of the human species. In Daybreak, he argues that many political and economic affairs ‘are not worthy of being the enforced concern of society’s most gifted spirits’ (D 179). However, acknowledgement that the idea and the pursuit of such grand politics are not for everyone does not make him an enemy of democracy, nor does it preclude his qualified endorsement of the egalitarian principle along the lines above. The egalitarian principle that all should be allowed to live in accordance with their own conception of the good can readily accommodate the requirement that some more enlightened spirits ought to be allowed to abstain from those forms of politics aimed only at making life endurable for as many as possible, subject on all sides to this not causing harm to others. It is the task of the enlightened few to question the prevailing conceptions of the good and to ask whether these serve or hinder the progressive evolution of humankind.
Nietzsche was always critical of the idea, which he attributed to the socialists of his time, that the highest good should stop at the ‘desire to create a comfortable life for as many as possible’ (HH 235). On his view, the attainment of this comfortable life for as many as possible would ‘destroy the soil out of which great intellect and the powerful individual in general grows’ (HH 235). The state may well have been a prudent institution for the protection of individuals against one another and against external threats. However, he argues, if this protective function is perfected too far ‘it will in the end enfeeble the individual and, indeed, dissolve him – that is to say, thwart the original purpose of the state in the most thorough way possible’ (HH 235). He is therefore opposed to the perfection of the state as a prudential institution, but not to the liberal ideal of a democratic society of autonomous and self-determining individuals. Nothing in his commitment to grand politics prevents him from recognizing the value of the basic democratic right of self-determination for all citizens, including those focused on the perfection of the species. Nothing prevents him endorsing the idea of a just and well-ordered society.
6 Democracy to come
In a passage towards the end of The Wanderer And His Shadow, Nietzsche defines democracy as that form of political organization that ‘wants to create and guarantee as much independence as possible: independence of opinion, of mode of life and of employment’ (WS 293). This complex ideal of independence goes beyond the basic architecture of negative liberties and protections mentioned above. Independence of opinion and mode of life implies a plurality of conceptions of the good and the ability of individuals not only to choose but also to live in accordance with their chosen mode of life. In the view of contemporary liberals such as Rawls, the capacity to freely choose one’s mode of employment implies a free market in labour. This threefold sense of independence is an ideal that calls for the right of individual self-determination mentioned above. As such, it serves not only the interest of those socialists and egalitarians concerned to create a comfortable life for as many as possible, but also the interest of those concerned with species perfection, since it provides the conditions under which they can best pursue their intellectual and cultural activities. Nietzsche distinguishes this ideal from the currently existing forms of democratic society by specifying that here he is speaking of democracy
as of something yet to come. That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels. – Have things really got less perilous because the wellbeing of the nations now rides in this vehicle? (WS 293, emphasis added)
There are, on Nietzsche’s view, ‘three great enemies of independence in the above-named threefold sense . . . the indigent, the rich and parties’ (WS 293). One of the points at issue here is the same as that identified in Human, All Too Human 452, namely the relative lack of independence among the mass of citizens. This is hardly surprising when we consider the social circumstances in Europe at this time. There were many who lacked the means to genuine independence of opinion and mode of life, including servants, women and all those who possessed no property. We should not hasten to conclude that, like Kant, Nietzsche would prefer to exclude such dependent persons from full citizenship. On the contrary, his commitment to a conception of a democracy to come that ‘wants to create and guarantee as much independence as possible’ might be taken as justification for providing all with access to sufficient wealth and education to ensure such independence.9 By the same token, we might argue for limitations to the degree to which those who already possess the means to independence – the genuinely rich but also the rulers of political parties – can use their power to deny independence to others. This might lead, for example, to the public financing of elections and limits to campaign contributions on the part of individuals, corporations and other vested interests. It might lead to restrictions on the degree to which political parties control the legislative votes of their members.
Nietzsche was well aware of the ways in which modern democratic society generates the conditions for genuine independence on the part of individuals. For example, he laments the disappearance of subordination, which becomes increasingly impossible as a consequence of the disappearance of belief in unconditional authority and definitive truth. But he also draws attention to the fact that the same conditions mean that ‘people subordinate themselves only under conditions, as the result of a mutual compact, thus without prejudice to their own interests’ (HH 441). He also recognizes that modern democratic society would lead to the flourishing of a plurality of conceptions of good. This is one of the implications of the independence of mind that he associates with genuine democracy.
Together, these suggest that he could well have supported a conception of just and democratic government that citizens might endorse on the basis of their own moral or political points of view, as though by mutual compact. We can find an intimation of such a conception of government as an expression of the collective power of citizens in the suggestion in Daybreak that it is not unthinkable to imagine a future state of affairs in which a criminal
calls himself to account and publicly dictates his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law which he himself has made, that by punishing himself he is exercising his power, the power of the lawgiver. (D 187)
Up to this point, we have considered only part of the framework of a modern constitutional democracy. A further crucial element of its operation is that the exercise of the collective power of the citizens is determined by reasoned deliberation. In other words, there must be some form of public justification not only for the basic institutions and policies of government but also for its day-to-day operations. Decisions are arrived at by offering arguments on matters of public policy, rather than threats or other intrusions upon the sphere of power of fellow citizens. Although he does not consider the giving of reasons in domestic political contexts, Nietzsche is not unaware of the tendency implicit in the democratizing project to rely on the exchange of reasons rather than threats. His speculations on the future effects of the spread of democracy in Europe include the suggestion that this will lead to a European league of nations with reduced powers and revised borders in which decisions will be made by future diplomats, experts in matters of culture, agriculture and communications, who will rely not on armies but on ‘arguments and questions of utility’ (WS 292). Applied to the domestic political arena, this idea of a nascent European sphere of public reason implies a conception of government based on the exchange of reasons between citizens.
In view of these scattered remarks about the implications of the process of democratization, and Nietzsche’s apparent endorsement of an ideal of democracy, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that we can conceive of a just and democratic society on the basis of his conception of individuals as subjects of power. We can imagine a form of political society based on the equality of citizens qua citizens that is more than a mere accommodation between differential spheres of power. We can reconstruct a pathway from citizenship rights understood as mere modus vivendi between individuals and state institutions, of vastly different degrees and kinds of power, to rights understood as derived from agreement on a political conception of justice. Given the tendency inherent in democratic society to multiply religious and other moral points of view, such a conception of justice would require an overlapping consensus on fundamental principles of justice and constitutional association. In addition to conceiving of him or herself as a lawgiver, the citizen of such a democracy to come would also have to recognize his or her differences from others. He or she would have to accept that they do not necessarily share a common conception of the good and that what are compelling reasons for one are not necessarily compelling for others. Such a pluralist and democratic society would only be stable if citizens were committed to an ideal of public reason as governing their political relation to other citizens. This would oblige them to argue for or against particular proposals in terms that they could reasonably expect others to endorse. In a democracy dedicated to creating and guaranteeing as much democracy as possible, citizens would achieve a feeling of power by respecting the independence of others. They would honour themselves by honouring the independence and feeling of power of others. Such a conception of citizens as reasonable subjects, endowed with a capacity for justice and a conception of the good, allows us to imagine a conception of justice similar to that found among late modern theorists of constitutional democracy such as Rawls. It allows us to envisage a well-ordered society in which the maintenance of the political relation of citizens to one another is a means to the feeling of power for all.
Notes
1 Herman Siemens suggests that what is at stake for Nietzsche ‘is not a few individuals but, in fact, the future of humankind, a concern that has its sources in a positive ethical impulse that fuels Nietzsche’s thought from beginning to end: that is, his perfectionist demand that we overcome ourselves as we are, that we do everything to enhance or elevate the human species by extending the range of human possibilities’ (Siemens 2009, p. 30).
2 These include Human, All Too Human (1878), Assorted Opinions and Maxims (1879), The Wanderer And His Shadow (1880) and Daybreak (1881). Siemens notes two features of Nietzsche’s writings during this period that stand in contrast to his overall treatment of democracy: ‘first, his positive evaluation of democracy and second, his engagement with democracy as a political phenomenon’ (Siemens 2009, p. 23).
3 This appears in published work for the first time in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Z 2, ‘Of Self-Overcoming’). It appears in notebooks from 1885, where he asserts that ‘This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!’ (Notebook 38, June–July 1885 [12]). See also 36[31]). Editor’s note: reference to ‘der Wille nach Macht’ can be found in Nietzsche’s notebooks as early as 1880. See KSA 8, 6[130].
4 According to Rawls, self-esteem includes a sense of one’s own value, as well as ‘a confidence in one’s own ability, so far as it is within one’s power, to fulfill one’s intentions’ (Rawls 1999, p. 386).
5 On The Genealogy of Morality reiterates the claim that cruelty was part of ‘the festive joy of the ancients’ (GM II: 6), in the context of arguing that, for a long time, the equivalence that underpinned the phenomenon of punishment relied upon ‘the pleasure of having the right to exercise power over the powerless without a thought’ (GM II: 5).
6 For further discussion of Nietzsche’s approach to an immanent historical understanding of the origin of rights, see Patton 2004, pp. 43–61; Patton 2008.
7 Reading this passage alongside his better known characterizations such as the suggestion that ‘State is the name for the coldest of all cold monsters’ (Z I, ‘On the New Idol’) leads Lester Hunt to the view that he is an anti-political thinker (Hunt 1985, pp. 454, 458ff). Brian Leiter takes this passage to indicate that Nietzsche believes humanity to be set on a path towards ‘a kind of anarchy’ (Leiter 2009, p. 2). Herman Siemens suggests that ‘the argument of this text is that the concept of popular sovereignty has the effect of destroying the religious aura of the state so that “modern democracy is the historical form of the decay of the state”’ (Siemens 2009, p. 25).
8 Nietzsche describes the Greek polis as mistrustful of the growth of culture, like every ‘organizing political power’ (HH 474).
9 Rawls argues that measures of this kind to establish a ‘property owning democracy’ are required by liberal principles of justice (Rawls 2001, pp. 135–40).
Bibliography
Brobjer, T. H. (2008), ‘Critical Aspects of Nietzsche’s Relation to Politics and Democracy’, in H. W. Siemens and V. Roodt (eds), Nietzsche, Power and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 205–27.
Hunt, L. H. (1985), ‘Politics and Anti-Politics: Nietzsche’s View of the State’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2(4), 453–68.
Leiter, B. (2009), ‘Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism (Princeton University Press, 2007)’. Notre Dame Dame Philosophical Reviews, 21 January 2009. http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23891-nietzsche-s-political-skepticism/. Visited 12 April 2003.
Nietzsche, F. (numerical references are to sections rather than page numbers)
—(1982), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, M. Clark and B. Leiter (eds), R. J. Hollingdale (trans). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [D]
—(1986), Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, R. J. Hollingdale (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [HH]
—(1994), On the Genealogy of Morality, K. Ansell-Pearson (ed) and C. Diethe (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [GM]
—(2001), Beyond Good and Evil, R.-P. Horstmann (ed.) and J. Norman (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [BGE]
—(2003), Writings from the Late Notebooks, R. Bittner (ed.) and K. Sturge (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—(2009), Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe, Nietzsche Source online at http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB.
Patton, P. (2004), ‘Power and Right in Nietzsche and Foucault’. International Studies in Philosophy, 36(3), 43–61.
—(2008), ‘Nietzsche on Rights, Power and the Feeling of Power’, in H. W. Siemens and V. Roodt (eds), Nietzsche, Power and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 471–90.
—(2013), ‘Nietzsche on Power and Democracy circa 1876–1881’, in M. Knoll and B. Stocker (eds), Nietzsche’s Political Philosophy. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
Rawls, J. (1999), A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—(2001), Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—(2005), Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Siemens, H. W. (2008), ‘Yes, No, Maybe So . . . Nietzsche’s Equivocations on the Relation between Democracy and “Grosse Politik”’, in H. W. Siemens and V. Roodt (eds), Nietzsche, Power and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 231–68.
—(2009), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Democracy (1870–1886)’. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 38, 20–37.
Socrates. (1961), ‘Crito’, in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds), H. Tredennick (trans.), Plato: The Collected Dialogues. Princeton University Press. (References are to numbered paragraphs).