The Free Spirit, The New Philosopher, and Nietzsche
Patrick Mooney
Philosophy 184
February 28, 2000
In the second chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche develops a fragmented portrait of a character type to which he refers as the "free spirit." Throughout the rest of Beyond Good and Evil, he expands on this portrait and connects it with another type, the "new philosopher," which he connects with the type of the free spirit in a specific (although complex) way. Nietzsche conceptualizes himself, as I will show, as both a "free spirit" and as a "new philosopher."
Nietzsche spends a great deal of time describing the characteristics of both of these types. The central characteristic of the complex characterization of the free spirit is freedom -- although Nietzsche conceptualizes this freedom in a non-traditional manner: it is not a political freedom, and it is certainly not democratic. In fact, this freedom "is for the very few" and for the "very strong" (Nietzsche 29). Independence is something for which one has to test oneself, argues Nietzsche, and if one "comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize" (Nietzsche 40, 29). The characteristics of the free spirit described by Nietzsche throughout the book are characteristics that are uncommon among humanity: the free spirits are subtle and have "the art of nuances"; they are "extra-moral" and "immoralists" -- that is, they do not bind themselves to the conventional beliefs about morality in which most people place their faith (Nietzsche 31, 32).
The primary characteristics of the free spirit, however, elucidate this type in a specific way that denies that the free spirit is merely a rare person. Nietzsche's characterization of free spirits defines them as a type that is primarily critical of and cautious toward all beliefs, and many of his descriptions of the characteristics of the free spirit are characteristics that are required for insightful and meaningful criticism. For instance, he links Stendhal's comment that the good philosopher is "dry, clear, without illusion" to the free spirit (Nietzsche 39). Nietzsche describes the free spirit as one who believes that many commonly accepted beliefs, such as the morality of altruism preached by Christianity and other religions, "must be questioned mercilessly and taken to court." The free spirit, he argues, resists the "seductions" of feelings that are attractive (Nietzsche 33). And the free spirit is precise, an attribute that is required for penetrating criticism: Nietzsche says that free spirits experience "disgust with what is clumsy and approximate" (Nietzsche 227).
All of these characteristics allow the reader to make an attempt to understand what Nietzsche means by "freedom" in the context of the free spirit. The free spirit is, first and foremost (although with certain qualifications that I will describe later), one who has liberated himself from the necessity of fidelity to a particular ideological position. This means, on one level, that the free spirit is critical of existing interpretations made by others and is able to examine them incisively. On another level, it means that the free spirit is courageous enough to examine his own position critically and reform it if necessary. Nietzsche specifically discusses this second kind of freedom: he says that one who is "destined for independence" must not remain "stuck" to any of several things, and this includes (most relevant here) not remaining stuck to a science (Nietzsche 41). Nietzsche views science as a method of interpretation, and it seems fair to believe that this criticism of intellectual faithfulness to a science is meant to apply to other types of interpretations as well (Nietzsche 16). There is nothing in the text that would indicate that science is different in any way that makes it less deserving of fidelity than other methods of interpretation.
This freedom possessed by the free spirit is not a radical break with all constraint, however -- Nietzsche puts definite bounds on this type of freedom and criticizes "anarchist dogs" and socialists who wish to remove all constraint from the lives of individuals (Nietzsche 202). The freedom of the free spirit is a freedom that comes from acceptance of a set of limits; Nietzsche says that the artist "obeys thousandfold laws precisely" and that "what is essential 'in heaven and earth' seems to be ... that there should be obedience over a long period of time." This, Nietzsche says, is what has trained the European spirit to be strong, curious, and mobile -- all characteristics that he has elsewhere identified with the free spirit (Nietzsche 188). Nietzsche also says that "one can give one's spirit many liberties" by "[tethering] one's heart and [imprisoning] it" (Nietzsche 87). It is not a freedom from constraint, but a freedom within constraints, that the free spirit possesses. This freedom, then, is freedom to express the drives of an individual as a creative process: as Nietzsche says, "thinking is merely the relation of ... drives to each other" (Nietzsche 36).
The central characteristic of the new philosopher is a break with certain ideas about the nature of the investigatory method that philosophers have traditionally used and the systems of valuation in which they have resulted. Beyond Good and Evil is full of polemics against traditional methods of philosophizing -- Nietzsche criticizes Kant for his essentially non-explanatory explanation of synthetic a priori truths; he criticizes Decartes' simplistic conception of thinking (Nietzsche 11, 16). He criticizes the God of the cosmological argument as "a sort of rape and perversion of logic" and says that faith in "immediate certainties" is "a stupidity that reflects little honor on us" (Nietzsche 21, 34). Clearly, Nietzsche intends to examine the methods of philosophizing that have been used up to his point to determine their value -- and perhaps the best summary of his opinion of their value is his statement that "the innocence of our thinkers is somehow touching" -- and to create a new method (Nietzsche 34).
Insofar as this is a critical process, the new philosopher is a free spirit. Nietzsche is emphatic about this and makes this point several times in Beyond Good and Evil. For instance, he says that they "will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future" and that the free spirits reach toward the new philosophers "with their hopes" (Nietzsche 44, 203). Nietzsche sometimes describes these new philosophers in terms similar to the ones he uses to talk about the free spirits. For instance, the new philosophers have a "duty to suspicion," like the critical and incisive free spirits (Nietzsche 34).
The new philosophers, however, are not "merely free spirits but something more, higher, greater, and thoroughly different" (Nietzsche 44). Among one listing of stages through which the new philosophers have passed, Nietzsche places "free spirit" among a total of eleven roles that "perhaps he himself [the free spirit] must have" played and concludes this listing with "and almost everything" (Nietzsche 211). There is strong suggestion in this second passage that the free spirit is a transitional state -- one of several -- that one goes through on the way to becoming a new philosopher. In the first of these passages, there is a strong suggestion that the new philosopher does not leave this characteristic behind but rather retains and builds upon it.
If the characteristic trait of the free spirit is a critical approach to beliefs, then the development of this trait in the new philosophers results in their ability to "create values" (Nietzsche 211). Nietzsche also identifies them as Versucheren -- a word that means attempters, experimenters, and essayists (Nietzsche 42). This creation of values is the "task" of the new philosopher: he is to "overcome the entire past" system of valuation and to become a "commander and legislator" of new values, to say, "thus it shall be!" (Nietzsche 211). The new philosopher, then, is one who makes an essentially creative attempt to command values. The object of this legislation of values is a "project of cultivation" of humanity; the new philosopher who creates values is "the man of the most comprehensive responsibility who has the conscience for the over-all development of man" (Nietzsche 61).
The creation of new values is important because, for the higher type of man, "'knowing' is creating'" -- that is, interpretation of the world is an essentially creative process; and this creative "knowing" in higher types of men furnishes the lower types with their "truths" (Nietzsche 211). Nietzsche himself, then, clearly fits into the type of the new philosopher, as Beyond Good and Evil is (at least on one level) a creation of a new way of looking at the world and assigning value to its aspects. He also qualifies as a free spirit. This is not merely a tautological and syllogistic statement (that is, "Nietzsche is a free spirit because he is a new philosopher, and new philosophers are by definition free spirits"). Rather, Nietzsche demonstrates important characteristics of free-spiritedness in the text of Beyond Good and Evil. The most obvious of these is the simple requirement that free spirits criticize conventional valuations -- Nietzsche does this throughout the text, including the critiques of philosophy (such as Kant's and Decartes' systematizations) noted above. More subtly, Nietzsche rejects the dichotomies that traditional systems of thought presuppose in favor of "lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance" (Nietzsche 34). One example of this is in his attempt to place a ranking of values on individuals, based on their abilities to endure a poisonous truth and their abilities to approach important philosophical problems (Nietzsche 39, 213).
More importantly, however, the fact that Nietzsche is a "free spirit" and a "new philosopher" is shown by the structure of Beyond Good and Evil as a whole and by the experimental method that he takes in his investigation of truth. Nietzsche has previously explained that the new philosophers are Versucheren, a word that has the primary meaning "attempters." All of Beyond Good and Evil is (obviously) an essay, a meaning that is also contained within the word Versuch; more importantly, it is also an attempt and an experiment. This constant experimental nature of the work can be seen in the manner in which Nietzsche constantly poses his positions as thought-experiments -- for instance, in the frequent use of the words "suppose" and "perhaps." "Suppose truth is a woman"; "Suppose nothing else were 'given' as real except our world of desires and passions"; "Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life..."; "Perhaps he himself [the new philosopher] must have been" the eleven things which Nietzsche describes as important aspects of the new philosopher's education (Nietzsche Preface, 36, 211). Other examples are present in the work, but these will suffice to show that this work is of an experimental nature.
In the end, Nietzsche is not advocating a new dogma. Beyond Good and Evil is an explanation and a philosophical argument, but it is also an experiment, a creative attempt at a method of interpreting the world. Like other free spirits and new philosophers -- if any have arrived yet -- Nietzsche has liberated from the prejudices of previous philosophers that led into dogmatism.
References
Nietzsche, Friederich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1966.
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