Nietzsche, Ethics and Education (Educational Futures, Rethinking Theory and Practice)

NIETZSCHE, ETHICS AND EDUCATION

EDUCATIONAL FUTURES RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume 8

Series Editors Michael A. Peters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA J. Freeman-Moir University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Editorial Board Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Miriam David, Department of Education, Keele University, UK Cushla Kapitzke, The University of Queensland, Australia Elizabeth Kelly, DePaul University, USA Simon Marginson, Monash University, Australia Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, UK Fazal Rizvi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Susan Robertson, University of Bristol, UK Linda Smith, University of Auckland, New Zealand Arun Kumar Tripathi, Dresden University of Technology, Germany

Scope This series maps the emergent field of educational futures. It will commission books on the futures of education in relation to the question of globalisation and knowledge economy. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of discourses of the knowledge and learning economies. It aspires to build a consistent approach to educational futures in terms of traditional methods, including scenario planning and foresight, as well as imaginative narratives, and it will examine examples of futures research in education, pedagogical experiments, new utopian thinking, and educational policy futures with a strong accent on actual policies and examples.

Nietzsche, Ethics and Education An Account of Difference

By Peter Fitzsimons Auckland, New Zealand

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-8790-045-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-8790-046-5 (hardback)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved © 2007 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NIETZSCHE, ETHICS AND EDUCATION........................................................I FOREWORD BY MICHAEL A. PETERS ................................................................... VII PREFACE ............................................................................................................... IX ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................... X NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS................................................................................. 1 WHY NIETZSCHE? .................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER OUTLINE ................................................................................................ 5

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION............................................................................ 12 NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATIONAL WRITING ................................................................ 12 EDUCATION AS LIBERATION OF THE SELF ............................................................ 13 SCHOPENHAUER AS NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATOR ..................................................... 16 CULTURE AND THE GENIUS ................................................................................. 20 EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.............................................................................. 24 NIETZSCHE, THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM ....... 29 NIETZSCHE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH EARLIER PHILOSOPHERS ................................ 29 ENLIGHTENMENT ................................................................................................ 31 IDEALISM ............................................................................................................ 36 KANTIAN METAPHYSICS ...................................................................................... 43 NIETZSCHE’S CRITIQUE OF KANT ........................................................................ 46 EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE............................................................................ 54 THE RECEPTION OF NIETZSCHE ........................................................................... 54 THE JOURNAL DEBATE ........................................................................................ 55 NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY .......................................................... 69 NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION .......................................... 73 LIBERALISM AND LIBERAL EDUCATION ............................................................... 73 ETHICS AND EDUCATION – A LIBERAL TREATISE ................................................. 75 A NIETZSCHEAN PERSPECTIVE ............................................................................ 79 AN ETHICS OF DIFFERENCE.................................................................................. 85 ETHICS AND DEMOCRACY ................................................................................... 87 NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION ...................... 91 NIETZSCHE AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM ............................................................... 91 CRITIQUE OF HEGELIAN REASON ........................................................................ 93 PERSPECTIVISM AND REGIMES OF TRUTH ............................................................ 96 LYOTARD AND METANARRATIVE ........................................................................ 97 DERRIDA AND LINGUISTIC DECONSTRUCTION ..................................................... 99 ‘SELF’ AS MULTIPLICITY AND CREATION ........................................................... 100

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDUCATION AS CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT ........................................................... 104 NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY .................................... 108 NIETZSCHE AND FOUCAULT .............................................................................. 108 GENEALOGY ..................................................................................................... 110 AUTONOMY ...................................................................................................... 112 SUBJECTIVITY ................................................................................................... 115 MECHANISMS OF SUBJECTIVITY ........................................................................ 121 NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION....................................... 127 THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY .......................................................................... 127 CONSTRUCTIONS OF DEMOCRACY ..................................................................... 128 DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION .......................................................................... 132 A NIETZSCHEAN CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACY ...................................................... 136 DEMOCRACY TO COME ...................................................................................... 142 NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH ..................................................................... 149 A CONTINUOUS THREAD.................................................................................... 149 WHO WAS THAT ÜBERMENSCH? ........................................................................ 153 WHAT IS THAT ÜBERMENSCH? .......................................................................... 156 ÜBERMENSCH AND EDUCATION ......................................................................... 160 THE CHALLENGE OF TECHNOLOGY .................................................................... 162 CONCLUSION................................................................................................... 166 REFERENCES................................................................................................... 171 INDEX................................................................................................................. 180

vi

FOREWORD BY MICHAEL A. PETERS It is a much too troubled and grandiose claim to say that in postmodernity Nietzsche has replaced Marx. It is the case that a ‘new’ Nietzsche has emerged from contemporary readings by scholars of the relevance of Nietzsche at least since the Nietzsche conferences held in Paris in the early 1960s with the participation of the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, Sarah Kofman, Eric Blondel and Michael Haar.1 This new Nietzsche, largely a French construction, was highly motivated by Heidegger’s interpretive work published in the 1960s (though first drafted in the mid to late 1930s) and Georges Bataille’s transgressive reading developed in the 1930s and 1940s. Heidegger in his work focused on the will to power as art and as knowledge, the eternal recurrence of the same and the question of nihilism. For Heidegger, Nietzsche marks the culmination of Western metaphysics. The influence of Heidegger’s Nietzsche is unmistakable in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and many others, even if they were to disagree with his conclusions. Bataille also strongly influenced the new reading through his association with André Breton and Surrealism, his friendship with Klossowski, and the journals he established which published Barthes, Foucault and Derrida (he establish Critique in 1946). While Bataille published only one work that focused on Nietzsche (Sur Nietzsche in 1946), his work and especially his eroticism was infused by Nietzsche. In this context of new Nietzsche studies we ought to mention also especially the work of Walter Kaufmann, the German Jewish philosopher who translated Nietzsche and anthologized existentialism, and R. J. Hollingdale – both a biographer and translator, who together but independently rehabilitated Nietzsche in the English-speaking world after WWII. To these names we can add the names of many prominent and leading Nietzsche scholars: Richard Schacht, Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen Higgins, Ernst Behler, David Farrell Krell, Alan D. Schrift, Keith Ansell-Pearson, and Duncan Large, to name a few.2 Nietzsche is alive and well. His influence is growing rather than waning, and various scholars, especially in the French tradition have manufactured readings that draw on Marx, Freud and Nietzsche in different combinations and registers. This is why I welcome this new book on Nietzsche in the field of education that adds to the beginnings of a now substantial literature that begins the task of serious philosophical engagement not only with Nietzsche’s educational writing but also with his ‘philosophy’ and his works in relation to educational themes, a significant aspect that is overlooked and marginalized in the general philosophical literature. Peter Fitzsimons’s admirable book takes up the question of ethics and education in Nietzsche to provide ‘an account of difference’, as he says, and in a carefully 1

2

See David B. Allison (ed.), The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1985). See also the journal New Nietzsche Studies edited by Allison and Babette E Babich, who has among other things, written of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science – http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/nns_journal_description.html. See the course bibliography for Duncan Large’s French Nietzsches on his webpage at http://www.swan.ac.uk/german/large/frennieb.htm.

FOREWORD

argued analysis by turn he provides the historical background on Nietzsche’s education and education’s Nietzsche (his reception and educational philosophy), while also examining his relationship to both German idealism and the Enlightenment. One of the many strengths of Fitzsimons’s reading is the close textual attention he attaches to Nietzsche in relation to liberalism and to democracy through the central concepts of autonomy, subjectivity and Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Another strength is the way that Fitzsimons traces Nietzsche studies in the work of the poststructuralists and its import for Nietzsche studies in education. As he writes in the opening chapter: ‘With his lack of reverence for the authority of truth and reason, his scathing criticism of transcendental authority, and his wariness of communal morality, Nietzsche provides a strong basis from which to question the existing ethical basis for education.’ I cannot provide a better starting point for an interesting, careful and scholarly reading of Nietzsche than this book by Peter Fitzsimons, even if you, the reader, are somewhat cautious about any wholesale embrace of Nietzsche within a normative educational philosophy.

Michael A. Peters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign September 2006

viii

PREFACE During rather a smorgasbord of a career, including long periods as a teacher and an educational management consultant, my interest stays in education, particularly in the broad questions about the nature of education, its aims, and its justification, in a world increasingly characterised by difference and dissent. I have long believed that for individual teachers, for institutions and for those charged with education policy direction, it is important to ask what we should be doing and why. It was not surprising, therefore, ten years ago to find myself delving into research on ethics in education. My interest in Nietzsche was first aroused with a reading of his Genealogy of Morals, not only a critique of a specific ethical position, but also an interrogation of the whole basis of morality itself. There was some resonance for me in his early experience of religion, where the word of God was law and religious authority sacrosanct. There was reassurance too in Nietzsche’s refusal to succumb to public opinion, to be marginalised by authority, or to give up in the face of overwhelming difficulty. Here at last was a courageous new (albeit hundred-year old) sacrilege – both poetic and inspirational, and to some extent sanctioned within academia, although less so in the increasingly psychologised world of education that assumes some consensus about how students and teachers should be. In purporting to provide a normative ethical view of education, both liberal and democratic theories rely on the rational nature of human beings to inform their practices. An examination of Kantian liberal theory as a basis for education reveals a reliance on transcendental values, moral certainty, and a form of subjectivity based on the enlightenment notion of personal autonomy. Social democratic approaches to education in the tradition of Rousseau also valorise the rational ‘self’, elevating forms of communal consensus over private autonomy, and promote a positive view of freedom with a subjectivity based on social cohesion and shared obligation. This book argues that an ethics based on either approach is inadequate, in that both approaches are founded on belief in a human essence subject to the higher authority of an abstract and universal reason. The book problematises the notion of a universal human ‘nature’, arguing instead that we occupy multiple and contradictory subject positions within social life, and that a preordained liberal or egalitarian order excludes otherness in the very manner that it abhors. The book thus undermines several assumptions that pose as ethical truths, including freedom, equality, goodness and universal reason. Nietzschean perspectivism undermines any privileged access to transcendental truth and questions the existence of an essential ‘self’. Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the ‘death of god’ provides a metaphor for the limits of universal reason, leaving no possibility for alternative certainties, while his Übermensch provides a critique of rigid adherence to societal norms. Although, post-Nietzsche, there can be no replacement for universal morality, his philosophy provides a useful reference for an educational perspective that honours difference, incorporates otherness, and problematises imposed solutions to the complex unfolding of life as a creative enterprise.

PREFACE

This book has arisen from my doctoral research at the University of Auckland, where I was privileged to be guided by two outstanding philosophers of education, Michael Peters and Jim Marshall, both of whom I acknowledge for their inspiration, their courage and their precision in exploring the troubled path of educational philosophy amid political turmoil. I want to thank my friends, family and colleagues for their understanding and patience through the preparation of this manuscript; in particular, my brother and travelling companion, Patrick, who encouraged me along this academic journey but for health reasons has now retired. I would like to acknowledge the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, the International Network of Philosophy of Education and the Friedrich Nietzsche Society for the opportunity to present and engage at international conference level many of the ideas developed in this book over the past six years. My thanks also to Bergin and Garvey for publishing an early version of some parts of chapter 5 in the Nietzsche’s Legacy for Education collection. Peter Fitzsimons ABBREVIATIONS To facilitate reference to the various editions of Nietzsche’s writing, and in keeping with common practice in Nietzschean scholarship, each of his works is cited in the text using an abbreviation of its title, followed by (a) Roman numerals to indicate major segments of the work (e.g., a ‘book’ or ‘essay’); and (b) the section number indicated by the symbol ‘§’. Where there is no section number, the section title has been used. Abbreviations are as follows: BGE: Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche, 1990a); BT: The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1967); CW: The Case of Wagner (Nietzsche, 1967); DB: Daybreak (Nietzsche, 1982); EH: Ecce Homo (Nietzsche, 1989); FEI: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions (Nietzsche, 1909); GM: On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1989); GS: The Gay Science (Nietzsche, 1974); HAH: Human All Too Human (Nietzsche, 1986a); TI: Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche, 1990b); TL: On Truth and Lies In A Nonmoral Sense (Nietzsche, 1990c); UM II: On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life – Second Untimely Meditation (Nietzsche, 1983a); UM III: Schopenhauer as Educator – Third Untimely Meditation (Nietzsche, 1983b); WP: The Will to Power (Nietzsche, 1968); WS: The Wanderer and His Shadow (Nietzsche, 1986b); Z: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche, 1982a).

x

CHAPTER 1

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

WHY NIETZSCHE?

With his lack of reverence for the authority of truth and reason, his scathing criticism of transcendental authority, and his wariness of communal morality, Nietzsche provides a strong basis from which to question the existing ethical basis for education. His critique of Enlightenment thinking undermines the Kantian notion of personal autonomy and provides a basis for poststructural challenges to the autonomous individual as the subject of education. His corrosive perspectivism paves the way for multiple interpretations of life as text and the honouring of difference as an ethical principle. His focus on life and health indicates a valorisation of an aesthetic approach to life, and his concept of genealogy provides a tool for varying interpretations of educational practices. His Übermensch provides a model of human becoming rather than reified being, his notion of ‘beyond good and evil’ constitutes a critique of binary modes of thinking, and his notion of will to power theorises much of the interplay between individuals and groups. Surviving manuscript pages indicate that his final and unfinished project was to be entitled The Revaluation of All Values3, signifying the idea that values are not grounded in eternal truths but able to be reconstituted by those capable of rising above the strictures of morality and other socially constructed norms. Education within liberal societies is valorised as a way of developing self-hood, for promoting knowledge as part of social and economic development, and for promoting shared values and traditions for society. Education is an ethical enterprise in that it is concerned with values that guide both private and social action. Typical of a liberal prescription for the focus of ethics is “what ends we ought, as fully rational human beings, to choose and pursue and what moral principles should govern our action” (Deigh, 1995, p. 244). Such prescriptions emanate from Kantian philosophy in which moral agency relies on a rational subject with free will, with a sense of duty and able to choose right from wrong. Although appealing to commonsense notions of right and wrong, they presuppose a universal notion of the good and a common approach to inquiry, although no such consensus is forthcoming. Instead, there is disagreement over both substance and

3

The phrase is used as a subtitle for the collection of Nietzsche's previously unpublished notes The Will to Power (WP) compiled by his sister. However, Hollingdale notes in the introduction to Nietzsche's last published work that The Antichrist was intended as the first part of a larger project The Revaluation of All Values, for which Nietzsche’s plan still survives. The revaluation involved a critique of Christianity, a critique of philosophy, a critique of morality and a book on the philosophy of eternal recurrence.

1

CHAPTER 1

process, extending all the way to foundational yet incommensurate values and so differences are not readily resolvable. In her survey of feminist perspectives on the self, Meyers (2004) points to the injustice done to women (as ‘other’) in promoting the rational individual – either as the Kantian subject who uses reason to transcend cultural norms and to discover absolute moral truth, or as homo economicus, the subject of neoliberalism who uses rational choice to maximise satisfaction of desire. Whether the self is identified with pure abstract reason or with the instrumental rationality of the marketplace, restricting the view of self to a rational entity isolates the individual from personal relationships and larger social forces. Prevailing conceptions of the self, she argues, minimise the impact of interpersonal relationships, ignoring the multiple sources of social identity constituted by such factors as gender, sexual orientation, race, class, age and ethnicity, and denying the complex world of the unconscious. Rather than considering the self in terms of decontextualised individualism and privileging reason over other capacities, this book agrees with Meyers’ view of the self as unstable and discursive – a ‘shifting confluence of multiple discursive currents’ (Meyers, 2004). Given the interplay between metaphysical issues about the self and moral and political theory, it is a concern for educational philosophy how particular subject positions are established and maintained, and what different perspectives might be brought to bear on the relationship between the ‘self’ and the social. As a critique of the rational ‘essence’ attributed to human ‘nature’, this book offers a Nietzschean genealogy of the subject, which treats as problematic the way we become who we are. The question of subjectivity, driven by Nietzsche’s critique of modernity and amplified in the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and others4, not only challenges the abstract idea of the autonomous rational subject, but also critiques the nature of educational engagement conducted under the name of democracy within liberal societies and the way in which subjects in education are increasingly individuated and governed. Over the past two decades, social policy in Western society has seen a neoconservative emphasis on individual responsibility and a neo-liberal reconstruction of individual freedom in matters traditionally considered as social. Citizens have been transformed through market economies into pay-as-you-go consumers; individuals and nations have increasingly subscribed to the power of technology and the rhetoric of globalisation; and welfare society has given way to notions of ‘thin community’ (Olssen, 2001). Economic rationalism underpins this direction with its emphasis on individual competition and the dismantling of social cohesion and the welfare state – a direction frequently referred to as ‘new right’ or ‘neoliberal’ (Upton, 1987; Haworth, 1994; Kelsey, 2002). Recent shifts in government terminology towards ‘new-left’ or ‘centre-left’ politics provide a superficial mask for the same economic and social direction, in which citizens are still ‘consumers’ and in which social participation and belonging still give way to the notion of community as merely an aggregate of individual responses.

4

2

Chapter 6 examines Nietzsche’s relationship to poststructural accounts of education.

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

Recent calls for a ‘third way’ (Giddens, 1998; 2002) are a thin disguise for an intensification of managerialism and the responsibilisation of individuals in a heavily prescribed social space. Critical social traditions in education are increasingly giving way to an intensified focus on pedagogy and assessment as a means to individual achievement, with a corresponding diminishing of concern for ethics and social participation. Given the imperative for growth and expansion inherent in capitalist economies, the rate of change in technological development shows no sign of abating, leaving a raft of uncertainties in the legal, ethical and political domain. Of concern for education here is the lack of certainty in the face of the poststructuralist critique of the rational metanarratives, and the uncertain future of the technological and political world the subjects of today’s education are being prepared for. Liberal and democratic theories have assumed a position of narrative dominance in determining political and educational ethics, even though, it will be argued, the practices they underwrite are questionable. Under the guise of personal autonomy and the amelioration of the human condition, proponents of liberal education (e.g., R. Peters, 1966) valorise the Kantian concept of universal reason to constitute and justify educational ethics. However, over-reliance on reason constitutes an intolerance of otherness, ignoring much of what is valuable in social life – an outcome that offends liberal principles of tolerance, fairness and respect for others. Nietzschean perspectivism challenges the universal certainty of the liberal account of educational ethics, treating identity as negotiable and ethical prescriptions as contestable. Democratic approaches to education (e.g., Dewey, 1916) recognise the social nature of education and thus promise an egalitarian sensitivity to a range of interests. However, such approaches still uphold liberal values in the reliance on reasoned argument for the promotion of a consensus, often resulting in compromise between public good and individual preference. Thus, neither liberal nor democratic theory offers sufficient basis for a universal educational ethic. This position undermines the Kantian account of the liberal subject of education and its recent transformation within neoliberal societies as the rational autonomous chooser (Marshall, 1995). The following chapters argue that what we call ‘community’ and ‘democracy’ leave much to be desired as ethical systems of engagement, particularly in terms of their urgency for reconciliation and closure. Exploration of the ethical basis for education, then, is vital. Nietzsche’s philosophy is particularly relevant to the task because of his self-professed perspective as an ‘immoralist’5 (EH, Why I am a Destiny §6), his lack of compromise in his clarity of vision, and his sustained critique of Western metaphysics. Calling into question the modernist notion of universal truth (and therefore the truth of a singular ethic) generates multiple responses to the problem of education – a multiplicity engendered and pre-configured by Nietzsche’s philosophical and political project. Of interest here is a redefinition of the self and what it is to be human; an examination of nature and culture; a perspective on man as artist and 5

Nietzsche uses the word to distinguish himself from those indoctrinated by the prevailing morality. In a different sense, Nietzsche’s major focus on values constitutes him very much as a ‘moralist’.

3

CHAPTER 1

creator (vs. creature); a synthesis of the Apollonian and the Dionysian; and the positing of Übermensch as the basis for a Nietzschean ethic for education. Nietzsche’s ideas provide alternatives to commonly accepted perspectives on social policy, on education, and on the nature of our ‘selves’. Nietzschean thought suggests an explanation for the breakdown of individual and national identity; it provides grounds for the celebration of difference; and raises the possibility of an ethics outside liberalism and traditional forms of social democracy. His notions of the emancipated ‘genius’ and the conformist ‘herd’ provide ground for an exploration of freedom and morality, and can be seen as a metaphor for the relationship between individual and society in a working out of the philosophical play between freedom and equality. Nietzsche’s philosophy suggests that traditional approaches to ethics do not provide sufficient basis for educational thought. Objectivist accounts of truth belie their interpretive stance, Kantian rationality is seen as just another self-referential belief system, while current formulations of democracy and social justice prevent the emergence of individual difference and cultural excellence. Obviously, a Nietzschean account cannot posit an alternative certainty, since the ‘death of god’ does not leave room for another transcendental truth, another supreme god or false idol/ideal. Instead, the Nietzschean calls into question the ‘taken for granted’, revealing ethics as an arguable realm with no point of refuge outside this world. Rather than appealing to universal truth or morality based on the power of abstract reason, Nietzsche’s impassioned plea for resuscitating the embodied self as a source of ethics (taken up in Foucault’s genealogy of disciplined and ‘docile’ bodies in chapter seven) provides a new perspective on educational philosophy. Within the concept of will to power, Nietzsche offers the notion of the Übermensch as a model of overcoming the social limitations of Christian morality and the dictates of fashion. In a continuous formative state, ‘untimely men’ (and here, read ‘Nietzsche’) stand outside the homogenising influence of the State and are not caught up in the rhetoric of political slogans like ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘third way’. Nor are they standard-bearers of liberal autonomy or champions of an egalitarian model of social justice. Nietzsche’s Übermensch, involving a continuous process of ‘overcoming’ and ‘becoming’, is promoted over the autonomous liberal subject as a hope for education, providing a perspective that contrasts with the egalitarian and collectivist notions that underpin social democracy and social justice as guiding ideals for educational endeavour. In the spirit of agonism, however, it is not proposed that we do away with the existing social order or the organising principles of modern society, since they constitute the shared social space that we currently inhabit and thus offer the possibility of a starting place for new perspectives. What is argued for is a space for reflective engagement with prevailing discourses in the politics of education, and in particular, an interrogation of the inflated authority that Western thought attributes to the rational capacity of the human animal to dictate all aspects of life’s direction. Interrogating authority and adopting multiple points of view constitutes an ongoing challenge to both the rational overlay on social life and the discursive practices that subjugate otherness. What emerges from this exploration is a respectful ethic of

4

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

difference, characterised within the Nietzschean/Derridean project of a ‘democracy to come’, interpretable as Chantal Mouffe’s (1988) idea of a ‘radical democracy’ or as Iris Young’s (1986; 2000) ‘politics of difference’. Prevalent views of education are problematised and a strong call issued for a new ethical justification of educational direction – beyond the promotion of universal reason, social homogeneity or the commercial production of qualifications. It is argued that traditional approaches to ethics in education are inadequate in their reliance either on the abstract idea of the liberal individual grounded in a transcendental idea of reason, or on the production of useful social and economic lives couched in the rhetoric of democracy and community. Rather than searching for a universal solution or any reconciled subject position, the following chapters promote subjectivity as a process of becoming, and welcome multiplicity and otherness as opportunities for engagement, for challenge and for educational growth. CHAPTER OUTLINE

This first chapter provides a necessarily brief summary of the argument, suggesting how Nietzsche’s perspective might contribute to new thinking about educational ethics. Having set the scene, the rest of the chapter offers an outline of the structure of the book, arranged and explained in terms of chapter sequence. Chapter two explores a number of explicit outcomes that Nietzsche envisaged for education, including his call for a strengthening of culture through the promotion of individual brilliance (‘the genius’), expressed through his early reverence for Schopenhauer. The chapter also explores Nietzsche’s strong criticisms of educational institutions of his day, many of which are seen as relevant to today’s institutions as they respond to economic and political necessity. Nietzsche wrote explicitly about education, more extensively in his early career, and his work can, in part, be attributed to his existential concern with the growing strictures on individual freedom emanating from the formation and intensification of a socialist State. However, his educational ideas go beyond mere ressentiment and political reaction, with his formulation of what might be called an educational philosophy not only explicit in his educational writing, but inherent in his poetic and sometimes exhilarating treatment of other philosophical issues. He saw much academic endeavour as ‘scholarly grinding’ and acknowledged some value in technicist education as appropriate for the masses, although he also saw the need for special individuals – those with higher aspirations – to rise above mediocrity. His higher process involves admiration, emulation, and then a moving beyond the images of people, real or imaginary, that we consider worthy of being our educators. In this process, we learn to “become those we are”6 (GS §335). Commentators have debated the relevance of Nietzsche’s corpus to educational theory. While some disparage his work as elitist ranting and others ignore him altogether, many characterise him not only as a productive educational theorist, but also as a personification of his own style of educator, a personification extended 6

Obviously, given Nietzsche’s non-essentialist position in relation to ‘self’, this is not a call for the emergence of an underlying ‘being’. Rather, the call is interpreted as an unravelling of the conditions which led to our current ‘becoming’ and the positing of the possibility of creating anew.

5

CHAPTER 1

into his most famous character – the wandering prophet Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s social and political location were major influences on the development of his philosophical stance. His perspectives on human subjectivity draw heavily upon his own religious upbringing, on German politics through his formative years, on Kantian scepticism, on Schopenhauerian pessimism, and also on a lifelong engagement with his own health. The chapter finishes by drawing together a number of themes emerging from Nietzsche’s perspective on education, that suggest a preliminary formulation of what might be called Nietzsche’s educational philosophy. Chapter three provides a particular historical view of the German intellectual tradition, illustrative of the social and cultural environment in which Nietzsche’s philosophy developed – in particular, the political environment of nineteenth century Europe, and German intellectual traditions in the shadow of Kant. Specific focus is given to the Enlightenment and German idealism as informing the political and philosophical milieu from which Nietzsche emerged, explaining to some extent the ‘driven’ nature of his message. Following Descartes and Kant, religious fundamentalism and the divine right of kings had given way to the ideal of the rational human being as the basis for ethical responsibility. Liberal thought promoted the twin threads of freedom and equality; both intertwined with the dignity accorded to humanity because of its rational ‘essence’, and both acting as foundation stones for Western morality and politics. Nineteenth century German philosophy was to a large degree underpinned by Kant’s metaphysics. The chapter explores Nietzsche’s criticism of Kant as a ‘cunning Christian’ in that the replacement of ‘faith in God’ as the source of ethical commitment still required a leap of faith – into the realm of transcendental reason. With no justification other than itself, reason was to form the basis of morality. Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ and his notion of ‘duty’ still required a commitment to the universal good – a secularisation of the ultimate and unknowable realm outside of human perception and sensation. From this universal realm, and aware of the limitations of human reason, Kant derived his ethical concern for autonomy and the notion of respect for persons as ends in themselves. It is from Kantian metaphysics that liberal thought draws much of its ethical support for the dignity of the individual at the heart of secular morality. Nietzsche’s antipathy to Kant is evident in his early eulogising of Schopenhauer for elevating the status of embodied presence, for his notion of the will as a metaphysical force, and his uptake of Eastern mysticism as a counterbalance to Kantian reason. Upholding Schopenhauer’s rejection of universal and transcendental ideals, Nietzsche posited will to power rather than rational essence as the driver for humanity. He promoted embodied, worldly presence – the real rather than an idea(l) of heavenly salvation or deified truth, and espoused individual character over equality or social conformity. Nietzsche’s view of morality is intertwined with his view of herd mentality, and although holding a deep respect for Christ himself, Nietzsche ridiculed the Christian technology of subservience and self-denial. He also refused any morality that relied on an afterlife or a ‘better world’ for salvation, believing instead that the life to be celebrated is of this world – not some elevation of the good (or godliness)

6

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

to a realm beyond human perception. As a critique of Kantian thought, Nietzsche’s Übermensch functions as a personification of worldly freedom, a (debatably) human form that projects Nietzsche’s valuation of the aesthetic over the transcendent, his espousal of individual overcoming over social obligation or public acceptance, and his promotion of health and power over sickness and duty. The role of culture and education was to prepare the way for Übermenschlich development, with the power of humanity manifest in its highest specimens7. The chapter finishes with a short overview of the philosophical relationship between Schopenhauer (Nietzsche’s mentor for many years) and Kant, in relation to Nietzsche’s subsequent conception of the Übermensch. In the style of a literature review8, chapter four draws mainly upon a debate conducted across a number of articles in three philosophy of education journals; their authors engaged with a wide range of Nietzsche’s writing to examine his relevance to educational thought. Extending the scope beyond the works generally considered to be ‘about education’, these authors extract a range of themes that yield fresh perspectives and enrich discussions in the field of educational philosophy. Interpretations include: a redefinition of the self and what it is to be human (GM); an examination of nature and culture as issues for education (UM III); a perspective on man as artist and ‘creator’ rather than ‘creature’; the elevation of genius and untimeliness as a model of individual freedom; a synthesis of the Apollonian and the Dionysian as a reconciliation of competing forces within our psyche (GM); and the positing of Übermensch as a basis for a Nietzschean ethic for education. This last formulation, representing much of Nietzsche’s philosophical contribution to the educational discourse, will be expanded in a later chapter as a metaphor for education: as an interpretation of individual freedom in relation to society; as a mechanism for facing adversity and challenge; and as an icon for the value of reflection and creativity in becoming who we are. Nietzsche’s other writing, although not explicitly focussed on education, also serves to illuminate educational debate, particularly his iconoclastic ‘death of god’ as a radical approach to perspectivism and the recognition of difference as an ethical principle; his attitude towards overcoming difficulties as a constant spur to higher achievement; and his counter-nihilistic approach to the creation of new values while facing up to the end of certainty. His parable of Zarathustra is often taken as a metaphor for his own educational philosophy, with its main character a model of the teacher Nietzsche saw himself as. The chapter finishes by recalling some specific themes from chapter two (i.e. Nietzsche’s specific educational writing), which, combined with the academic commentary of chapter four suggest what might be translated into the modern idiom as a Nietzschean educational philosophy – a collection of thoughts that point strongly to his figure of the Übermensch as a metaphor for education.

7 8

The character and function of Nietzsche’s Übermensch is explored in chapter nine. The range, style and extent of Nietzsche’s writing preclude a full review of his writing. This book limits the focus to that which is either explicitly or implicitly educational. Other commentators are drawn upon throughout to highlight specific points, their work summarised and analysed where appropriate.

7

CHAPTER 1

Chapter five explores the dual traditions of liberalism and democracy in the British school of educational philosophy, where Richard Peters (1966) adopted a substantially Kantian position to advocate a universal ethics for education; a position that required on the one hand, individual rationality, concern for truth and the giving of reasons; and on the other hand, a concern for democratic process and respect for others as ends in themselves. The fundamental ethical system for Peters is democracy, not because the majority holds power, but because it allows for deliberation by informed individuals operating within a paradigm of Kantian rationality. The chapter argues that Nietzschean perspectivism and genealogy undermine Peters’ claims, providing a vigorous challenge to universal rational morality as the fundamental basis for ethical theory. In an early essay, Nietzsche portrayed truth as human construction rather than as a reflection of objective reality; preferring to interpret reason as an object of faith rather than as the basis for a categorical imperative or as a source of respect for others. A Nietzschean perspective on the notion of ethics in education suggests that a multi-dimensional perspective may be more appropriate than a universal morality in determining an ethical basis for educational direction. Such a view resists final closure on any individual identity, suggesting that identity formation is a political process that rests on social definitions of difference, with the resulting identity not an inherent truth about one’s being, but a self-reinforcing ‘circle of significations’ (Connolly, 1991). The chapter argues for an agonistic relationship, in which contending identities and ‘otherness’ are nurtured – a position that challenges the reliance on the giving of reasons as the basis for ethics. With difference as an ethical principle and considering Peters’ own call for fairness and respect for persons, his theory is exposed as insufficient to embrace the complex and not always rational processes of subjects under liberal democracy. Chapter six brings together a number of authors generally considered within postmodern and poststructural analysis, examining Nietzsche’s contribution to their educational philosophy. The varied perspectives within poststructural critique provide a strong counterbalance to essentialist and reified notions of the self within liberal thought. The chapter explores some recurring themes in poststructuralist endeavour, linked to Nietzsche’s corrosive effect on the humanist subject. Through a critical examination of the fundamental place of scientific reason in defining our social ‘reality’, assumptions underlying educational theory and practice are challenged – in particular, the assumption of a unified reason and the Hegelian notion of progress as part of modernity. The chapter also explores the relation between power and truth in the maintenance of social order, the play of difference as a critique of ‘grand narrative’, deconstruction of the ‘text’ and ‘the author’ in favour of an interpretive paradigm, and the ‘self’ as multiplicity and creation. The deconstruction of singular meaning challenges educators to enter into critical and constructive dialogue, to interpret ‘otherness’ as tentative and to avoid the closure of final definitions. Chapter seven explores the notion of autonomy in relation to the Nietzschean subject, referring in particular to Foucault’s notions of ‘governmentality’ and ‘subjectivity’, locating the modern self firmly within the rationality of government.

8

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

Drawing heavily on Kantian thought, the notion of autonomy promotes a sovereign view of the self, operating according to rational principles largely removed from social and political encumbrance. As the teacher of will to power at the heart of existence, Nietzsche might be expected to support such an empowered and ‘liberated’ view of the self. However, the autonomous individual is a misguided notion for Nietzsche, since the guiding light of reason is neither transcendental nor internal, representing a false ideal (‘idol’) that can be neither known nor experienced. His vision is of higher types attempting to break free into a realm of individual perception, but being dragged down by mediocrity and a lowly morality that attempts to homogenise and ‘make small’. Arguing that Foucault extends and elaborates on Nietzschean thought, the chapter provides a Foucauldian critique of Kantian autonomy as an aim of education, offering instead the notion of ‘subjectivity’ to represent the social nature of self-government. Rather than adopting a universal and transcendental notion of ‘self’, the Nietzschean/Foucauldian direction reveals a contingent identity that develops in relation to the prevailing discourse – as much ‘subjected’ as ‘subjecting’. The notion of autonomy, then, can be seen as a mantra to keep individuals believing in individual freedom and self-government, while operating within the sphere of power and obligation. Social and political considerations are therefore important in determining the direction and extent to which people might take charge of their own lives within particular social groupings such as family, community, nation or humankind. All these social groupings require particular constellations of subjectivity, with a belief in individual autonomy acting to secure willing compliance and cooperation, especially if that is to be achieved through consensus or community. The chapter explores an extension of this subjectivity into ‘third way’ politics – a recent manifestation of social democracy and a euphemism for political management of human aspiration that extends into the domain of education. The chapter concludes that ‘third way’ rhetoric masks a highly governed form of individuality bearing little resemblance to participation in a caring community. Chapter eight begins by highlighting some aspects of Nietzsche’s relationship with social and political life relevant to his attitudes about democracy. The chapter then explores various accounts of democracy suggesting some common features, including: a reliance on rational deliberation; the promotion of self-government and self-regulation; and a belief that it enables fair compromise in the satisfaction of wants. Democracy is then examined in relation to education, drawing particularly on the work of Dewey (1916; 1938), Gutmann (1999), and R. Peters (1966); to suggest that democratic approaches to education involve: initiation into certain traditions and rituals, a reliance on rational debate and deliberation; a respect for equality in the interplay between self and social cooperation; a strong relationship between education and lived experience; and a considerable presumption of freedom in the exercise of one’s rights and responsibilities. Dewey (1916) argued further for shared values, free interaction, and the inhibition of impulses through critical reflection. Nietzsche’s critique of democracy is explored from a number of angles: its metanarrative status; its egalitarian focus, its exclusion of otherness; its privileging

9

CHAPTER 1

of reason in human affairs; and its elevation of a social system above the individuals it purports to serve. The chapter suggests Nietzsche’s thinking on these matters reflects not only his critique of transcendental reason, but also his unease about limitations on personal expressions of difference, possibly stemming from his experience of German nationalism and progressive socialism. Although Nietzsche’s writing is strong in his criticism of democracy, Derrida notes that Nietzsche is not an “enemy of democracy in general” (2002, p. 234). Rather, Nietzsche can be seen as criticising particular forms of democracy. The chapter finishes with a Nietzschean perspective on the relationship between democracy and education, engaging with the debate about whether ‘antidemocratic’ Nietzsche can be used to support a vision of democracy in education. Nietzsche’s whole stand against Kantian metaphysics and against many of the political practices that bear the name ‘democracy’ is really the beginning of his notion of a democracy ‘yet to come’ – a Nietzschean idea developed by Derrida and others9 as a way to proceed. Its lack of closure and respect for otherness is congruent with Iris Young’s notion of a ‘politics of difference’ – an acknowledgement of the contingent and tentative grip human knowledge has on what it calls ‘social reality’. ‘Democracy to come’ is not about the power of majorities or the rights of minorities. It is not about consensus or rational debate. It represents a space for diversity and mutual recognition of otherness – necessarily a site of tension and one that calls for agonistic engagement with difference. Such is the function of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Chapter nine draws together a number of Nietzschean themes in the figure of the Übermensch as a metaphor for education. It is argued that a focus on Übermensch is not so much an examination of an ontological state, but a reflective critique of one’s own ability to operate in a social environment in celebration of this life; a celebration in which the creator is secure, independent, and highly individualistic, with a healthy balance between passion and reason. Given Nietzsche’s rejection of conformity and transcendental ideals, Übermensch represents a plurality of norms, an undermining of the doctrine of one normal human type, and the possibility for multiple perspectives – a possibility that underpins an ethical direction towards multiplicity and celebration of difference rather than any closure into certainty and unity. In his stand over and beyond nihilism, Nietzsche attributed the power of creation to a new possibility for humanity – his Übermensch, the development of which can be seen as a continuous project throughout his work. Contrasted with the sickly specimens Nietzsche saw as weakened and tamed in the servitude of Christianity, morality and societal decadence, Übermensch represented a warrior strength emanating from facing up to life’s challenges and an agonistic process of overcoming difficulties. In this engagement, one’s enemies are welcomed as contributing to one’s own strength – thus a philosophy of respect for otherness rather than the rejection of negativity that constitutes the Hegelian dialectic. The kind of overcoming defended here and modelled in the Übermensch is, then, one 9

10

Derrida’s (2001; 2002) ‘democracy to come’ is put forward in chapter eight as an interpretation of Nietzsche’s thinking, and expanded by others following Derrida. See, for example, Caputo (1997); Touraine (1997); Peters (1996); and West (1990).

NIETZSCHE AND ETHICS

that incorporates difference with a cumulative strengthening of character. Inherent in the notion of Übermensch is a continuous and dynamic overcoming of the currently known. Nietzsche’s themes of eternal recurrence and will to power can be understood in terms of his Übermensch construction, although it can be argued that the theme of eternal recurrence is best understood as a call to action rather than a description of a metaphysical cycle of actual events. To embrace the idea of eternal recurrence is to face the hypothetical possibility of being stuck in one’s existential predicament forever, and so the imperative is to create that cycle (as if it were true) at the highest possible level of achievement. Given that Nietzsche never painted an explicit picture of the Übermensch for us, we are left to decipher possibilities from the literature that preceded Nietzsche, from his references to Übermenschlich qualities of the people he admired, and from his depiction of his own physical health and socio-cultural predicament. Nietzsche’s Übermensch is portrayed as a form of ‘overcoming’ and challenges some prevailing assumptions about human identity. Unlike the autonomous individual espoused by Kant, Übermensch is particular (not universal), impassioned (not just rational), in the image of man (not God), embodied (not spiritual), and worldly (not ideal or transcendental). It is also social, interactive and pragmatic; and, through agonistic contest, incorporates otherness. It provides a useful metaphor for education, signifying a level of development beyond the currently known, and promoting life as subjective challenge and selfdetermination. Also explored in chapter nine is the challenge laid down by Heidegger in his characterisation of technology as a danger for humanity in its capacity to enframe our way of thinking. As education is increasingly being called upon to deal with the nihilism of modernity through the development of Übermensch, we run the risk of casting education itself as a neutral technology and thus of losing our ability to stand back and reflect on the process to which we are committed. Nietzsche’s Übermensch, then, has an added dimension of introducing the self-reflective capacity to the process of its own development, and thus for philosophy of education in terms of what education is doing, how it goes about that, and to what ends. The final chapter provides a short summing up of the book’s argument, concluding that traditional approaches to ethics do not provide sufficient basis for educational thought today. Nietzsche’s philosophy, in its dismantling of metaphysics, is unable to posit an alternative certainty either; although it provides a strong platform from which to problematise the relationship between self and society, to question the governing role played by reason in the development of social selves, and to question the political structures that are charged with maintaining the current order. With no referent in a supernatural realm and no divine inspiration for truth, human enterprise becomes the possibility of multiple subjectivities and the creation of new values. The value of Nietzsche’s thinking for education is its refusal of unwarranted subjugation and its agonistic engagement with otherness – a ‘celebration of difference’.

11

CHAPTER 2

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATIONAL WRITING

In attempting to locate Nietzsche’s work in the realm of ethics, it is illuminating to examine the specific focus he gave to the topic of education. It would be a straightforward exercise to assemble his written comments about education or to search indexes from his published works that focus specifically on that topic. However, Nietzschean scholars do not concur about what Nietzsche is ‘really saying’, especially when various aphorisms are decontextualised either in relation to a particular book or in relation to the rest of his philosophy. It has also become something of an art form to interpret his other work (not clearly identified as ‘education’) as evidence of what might be called Nietzsche’s ‘educational philosophy’; particularly his ideas on the ‘death of god’ as an approach to perspectivism, his attitude towards overcoming difficulties, his counter-nihilistic approach to the end of certainty, and his exhortation to be all we can be in the face of the threat of life as an eternally recurring repetition of events (GS §341). His parable of Zarathustra is often taken as a metaphor for his own educational philosophy and as a model of the teacher Nietzsche saw himself as10. The contentiousness of the interpretive approach stems partly from a lack of consensus about what constitutes ‘education’. It also stems, however, from the extended period of Nietzsche’s writing and what are often thought to be inconsistencies and contradictions in his ideas. The project is further complicated by the different status usually accorded to his published work from that accorded to his unpublished manuscripts, with not all commentators agreeing over which should take precedence (Golomb, 1997, p. 23). However, throughout Nietzsche’s work there is a consistent thread, and some ongoing relevance to issues that educators grapple with today. The current chapter examines some historical influences on the development of Nietzsche’s elitist perspective on culture and education, in particular the role played by Schopenhauer, the intensification of the German State, and a gradual redefinition of education as a commercial utility. Drawing from Nietzsche’s sometimes extravagant ideas, the chapter offers some perspectives on culture and education that may be relevant to the political milieu of today’s institutions. The focus is on Nietzsche’s specific writing about education and interpretations of his own references to the topic. In the interests of clarity, recent commentary on the educational implications of his wider philosophy will be left until a later chapter, 10

Gordon (1980) goes as far as suggesting that Nietzsche’s whole educational philosophy can be gleaned from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

12

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

although both aspects are important and will be taken into account in determining what might be called a ‘Nietzschean’ educational philosophy. This determination forms the basis of the argument that Nietzsche’s work provides a consistent and useful perspective on the problem of ethics in education, and that his notion of ‘overcoming’ provides a strong metaphor for education – a metaphor that comes to fruition in his figure of the Übermensch. Aside from the educational attributes that are read into his various aphorisms or into the teaching style of his character Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s oeuvre includes specific writings on the topic of education, notably Schopenhauer as Educator (UM III), in which he refers to Schopenhauer as his ‘true educator’; and a series of five lectures (FEI) delivered two years earlier at Basel University, outlining what he saw as a bleak future for German educational institutions. Although written in the early 1870s, the ingredients of his educational thinking are explicit, supporting substantially the ideas expounded in his later writing, although he was later to voice opposition to Schopenhauer and Wagner as ideal exemplars. Although his early writing opposed the authoritarian nature of growing State control in nineteenth century Germany, Nietzsche’s writing cannot be framed up merely as a dialectical attack on his predecessors. He proposed several desirable outcomes of a healthy education system, including a strengthening of culture and the promotion of individual brilliance through such notions as ‘genius’ and ‘untimeliness’. The relationship between individual and culture was a strong theme in Nietzsche’s work, especially in the philosophical development of his concept of education. In fact, his notion of culture is inextricably linked to what he calls ‘true’ (i.e., desirable) education. But his idea of culture is neither a description of existing practices nor a prescription for communal egalitarianism. Rather, it provides a higher ideal of the perfecting of nature through the promotion of ‘genius’, for, he claims, it is through great men and great works that cultures are celebrated. EDUCATION AS LIBERATION OF THE SELF

A key role for the Nietzschean educator is to reveal or liberate the ‘true’ self. This is not the search for an individuated essence or the enlightenment quest for the Cartesian subject, but rather an exhortation to break free from conventionality, to be responsible for creating our own existence, and to overcome the inertia of tradition and custom. The difficult task in this quest is to follow the path towards a higher, and as yet unknown, self: for your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you usually take yourself to be. Your true educators and formative teachers reveal to you what the true basic material of your being is, something in itself ineducable and in any case difficult of access, bound and paralysed: your educators can be only your liberators (UM III §1). The true self could be revealed and one’s acquired identity overcome, not by introspection, but by examining our revered objects and educators of the past, as

13

CHAPTER 2

stepladders upon which we have climbed so far; in other words, how have we become who we are. Examining those held in high esteem was, for Nietzsche, the path to our true selves, with the culture of modern society never anything more than “the prisonhouse or hunting ground of the gifted individual” (Stern, 1983: xxxii). In addition to the two specifically ‘educational’ works mentioned, Nietzsche also gave considerable attention to the subject of education in his other early essay on the utility of history as reflecting the values of a particular society (UM II). In this essay, the goal of education is identified as the ‘free cultivated man’; as opposed to both ‘the scholar’ (an ‘aesthetic and cultural philistine’ and a ‘walking encyclopaedia’), and the ‘speedily employable man of science’ who attempts an unobstructed knowledge of the world through empirical observation. Here, Nietzsche is critical of academic pretensions to knowledge for its own sake, since everything that possesses life ceases to live when it is dissected. He is particularly critical of history’s pretence at unifying past events, when any order that does occur is by mere chance amid life’s multiple pathways. According to Nietzsche, a shallow ‘knowledge of culture’ usurps the place of ‘life and experience’ as an educational goal, with the illusory promise that it is possible to summarise the greatest experiences of former ages in a few years. In the same way, Nietzsche suggests, young artists are taught by means of visits to picture galleries instead of in the workshops of the masters, particularly that unique master – nature. Nietzsche is explicit about the ‘necessary truth’ of education that culture springs from life; and sees a vital role for education in the fight against mere imitation and uniformity. Harking back to the Greek conception of culture as a coming together of life, thought, appearance and will, Nietzsche’s education is about a wholism and a truthfulness, even though such a stance may procure the downfall of the shallow and ‘decorative’ culture of the day. Through the period of his writing (1871 –1889), Nietzsche’s focus shifted. What is generally considered his ‘early’ period (1871 - 1876) harks back to ancient Greece with hope for redemption though art and high culture. His ‘middle’ period is often described as his positivistic phase, in which his quest for knowledge was a focus on reason and science, and a turning away from his earlier Romanticism. His last productive period (post 1883) saw a more focussed engagement with the idea of universal morality and the creation of new values. Recognition of the varying perspectives throughout the phases of his philosophical ‘development’ is a means of reconciling what are often thought to be contradictions in his work. In spite of the perspectival shifts that can be read into Nietzsche’s thought, it will be argued that there are some common threads that unify Nietzsche’s corpus against the nihilism of modernity in what one commentator has called a “one-man, non-stop demonstration of exaltation” (Tanner, 1990, p. 13). What might be taken as his explicit educational philosophy, then, is drawn mainly from this early period from 1872 to 1874, during which time he was coming to terms with the restrictive institutional nature of his employment in universities and his frustration with the ascendancy of the State in prescribing cultural parameters. During this time he attacked scientific progress and followed Schopenhauer in his view that non-rational forces were at the heart of reality. Life

14

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

was seen as more important than academic forms of knowledge; art and music were celebrated as the pathway to a joyful and creative existence. References to education scattered throughout Nietzsche’s later works11 tend to support his early educational philosophy, and there is little to detract from his earlier formulation. Schacht (1995) depicts the essay on Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s declaration of intellectual independence – from the academic establishment, from the kind of scholarship practiced and honoured by his philological peers, and from the sort of philosophy that had become dominant in the universities of the time. Hollingdale (1996, p. 78) suggests that the focus is on Schopenhauer as an exemplar, that it is Schopenhauer’s legend that educates, and that his educative role results from his fearless independence in the service of truth. Although a reader can be forgiven for believing that it is the earlier philosopher in person that Nietzsche is referring to, the argument supported here is that the image is a metaphor for Nietzsche’s own self-educative process, and that his description of Schopenhauer is an attribution based on his perception of his own life. He was to write many years later: Now that I am looking back from a certain distance upon the conditions of which these essays bear witness, I do not wish to deny that at bottom they speak only of me. ....in Schopenhauer as Educator my innermost history, my becoming is inscribed. Above all, my promise! ... At bottom it is admittedly not ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ that speaks here, but his opposite, ‘Nietzsche as Educator’ (EH, The Untimely Ones §3). In the light of Nietzsche’s own admission, an analysis of his essay on Schopenhauer is more likely to reveal his own philosophy of education rather than that of his mentor. Nietzsche’s depiction of himself as Schopenhauer’s ‘opposite’ is interpreted as his retrospective attempt to reject Schopenhauer and the pessimistic response to life. However at the time of writing, Nietzsche obviously saw something of himself in Schopenhauer (or Schopenhauer in himself). Schopenhauer’s ideas permeated much of Nietzsche’s later writing as well, so an exploration of the significance of Schopenhauer is integral to an exploration of Nietzsche’s philosophy. What was it about Schopenhauer in particular that appealed to Nietzsche? After all, there had been many other great men. And what influence did Schopenhauer have on Nietzsche’s philosophy? Such questions cannot be adequately addressed without acknowledging the impact of Kant on nineteenth century German philosophy. That analysis is part of the examination of German idealism in chapter four, but for now, the focus is on Nietzsche’s explicit educational commentary.

11

Some examples are his comments: on ‘scholars’ (BGE §204 – §213; Z II, On Scholars), on the worthlessness of German education (EH, Why I am so Clever §1), (HAH II §181, §184, §268; WS §282), on the uselessness of ‘formal education’ (DB III §195), on the need for truthfulness in education (DB III §196; Z II, On the Famous Wise Men; WS §267), on the relationship between education and strength (HAH I §224), on education and culture (HAH I §272).

15

CHAPTER 2

SCHOPENHAUER AS NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATOR

Nietzsche identifies two maxims for the successful educator: on the one hand, to recognise and develop particular strengths in a pupil; on the other hand, to draw forth and nourish all the aspects in harmony. Schopenhauer was a philosopher who for Nietzsche was capable of achieving this balance. It is worth noting that Nietzsche does not ascribe to Schopenhauer any intentionality in his educative task. Rather he sees Schopenhauer setting a moral example to be emulated. The educative function seems to be one that is determined by the pupil, who adopts the challenge of achieving the standard set by his exemplar. Schacht points out that when Nietzsche speaks of Schopenhauer as educator, the German text in the title is not Lehre (signifying instruction or the imparting of some body of knowledge or doctrine). Rather he uses the word Erzieher, which carries the idea of challenging, provoking, stimulating, inspiring; all part of acting as an examplar. It is in this sense that ‘educator’ is here to be understood. Rather than creating disciples or moulding pupils to fit specified outcomes, human beings were to become human by developing their intellectual and creative abilities to the full. Three qualities of Schopenhauer stood out for Nietzsche: his originality and honesty in a period of German philosophy that he saw characterised by pedantry and conformity; his cheerfulness emanating from courage and strength; and his uncompromising steadfastness. Nietzsche also followed Schopenhauer in his contempt for those ‘scholars’ with a limited search for ‘pure knowledge’ unrelated to the vicissitudes of life. In contrast he saw Schopenhauer as liberating philosophy from the control of state and society, partly through the introduction of Eastern mysticism to the realm of philosophy. Nietzsche’s early infatuation with Schopenhauer is evidenced in his psychological positioning of himself in relation to Schopenhauer as “a son being instructed by his father. It is an honest, calm, good-natured discourse before an auditor who listens to it with love” (UM III §2). Nietzsche expressed a similar parental admiration for Wagner in his first book, the Birth of Tragedy, also written in this early period. Wagner had been heavily influenced by Schopenhauer as well, and so both directly and indirectly, Nietzsche’s philosophy was imbued with Schopenhauerian thought. Janaway (1994) details the Schopenhauerian themes that impacted on subsequent musicians and philosophers, among them his aesthetic theory, his philosophy of music, his recognition of the unconscious, his treatment of the overpowering sexual drive, his pessimism, and his questioning of the value of human existence. These themes were certainly picked up and elaborated on through Nietzsche’s productive years, although it is difficult to assess how much relied on the direct influence of Schopenhauer and how much was the Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age and the impending nihilism of modernity’s engagement with the inaccessible realm of metaphysics. Nietzsche believed life was more important than distanciated knowledge, and his early writing claimed that art and music could provide the pathway to a joyful and creative existence (BT), although his later autobiographical reflections (EH) engaged in self-critique for his earlier naïve belief that art could be the palliative for the cruelty and suffering of life. He followed Schopenhauer in his view that

16

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

non-rational forces were at the heart of reality. The intensity of Nietzsche’s interest in Wagner and Schopenhauer (and even his eventual and repeated rejection of both) is evidence of the degree to which he was challenged and provoked by them, and thus, by his own definition, the degree to which they were prime examples of his notion of an educator. Hollingdale (1996) argues that, following the failure of the German revolution of 1848 and prior to the foundation of the Reich in 1871, freedom of expression was limited. As an example he refers to the purges carried out in university philosophy departments against anything that was subversive of the existing order, and characterises the Germany of Nietzsche’s formative years as a conservative backwater of Europe. Ansell-Pearson (1994) notes that the development of the German Reich was not based on profound philosophical deliberations, and that Bismarck came into power by announcing that he opposed the politics of ‘speeches and resolutions’ with a polity of ‘iron and blood’. Under Bismarck, twenty-six German States were assembled into the new German Reich. This was the ‘Age of Progress’ (Burchell, 1966), characterised by increasing mechanisation, growing reliance on applied science, and a rising socialism amongst the working class. Portrayed as authoritarian but benign12, the role of the State was to safeguard the German military machine – an important tool of foreign policy, and to ensure the stability of the existing German government. Given the political direction of the period, it is not surprising that Nietzsche’s high regard for independent thinking and untimely men distanced him from German nationalism. What he found in Schopenhauer was the independence that he sought: liberation from the constraints of conventional thinking, from the strictures and imperatives of existing institutions (social, political, and also academic), and even from the thinker’s own biological and historical conditioning (Schacht, 1995, p. 162). Nietzsche, reflecting Schopenhauer’s contempt for Hegel, often denounced Hegel’s idea of the State as the highest goal for mankind. He argued that, under the power of the State, the money-makers and the military held power; so that serving the State was a lapse into stupidity and counterproductive to culture. Instead, he saw it as the duty of philosophers to concern themselves with the world of culture, so that the spirit of humanity could be preserved. It was important therefore for Nietzsche to theorise the nature of this ‘spirit’ and it was Schopenhauer that provided a clue. Schopenhauer represented the staunch spirit that Nietzsche admired, the spirit of a man who reconciles action and contemplation, voluntarily taking upon himself the suffering involved in being truthful to the point of destroying his former self:

12

In rapid succession Bismarck “pushed through the German parliament a series of insurance acts against sickness (1883), accident (1884) and old age (1889). By the first years of the 20th century, Germany had laws regulating every aspect of industrial life: wages and hours, time off, grievance procedures, safety measures. There was even a law prescribing the location and minimum number of toilets and windows in factories” (Burchell, 1966, p. 79).

17

CHAPTER 2

He will, to be sure, destroy his earthly happiness through his courage; he will have to be an enemy to those he loves and to the institutions which have produced him; he may not spare men or things, even though he suffers when they suffer; he will be misunderstood and for long thought an ally of powers he abhors (UM III §4). Nietzsche’s image of Schopenhauerian man not only describes the selfovercoming inherent in his later formulation of the Übermensch, it illuminates the trajectory of his relationship with friend and mentor Richard Wagner, particularly his reticence about the strong nationalistic spirit that imbued the work of his cultural forbear. It is also strangely prescient of Nietzsche’s own fate for years to come in having his ideas misappropriated in support of a totalitarian regime in Nazi Germany13, the kind of misreading that Nietzsche may have anticipated in his description of himself as having been “born posthumously” (AC: Foreword). Schopenhauer had interpreted Kant’s ideas, to depict the world in terms of two aspects: that of representation, or the way we experience things; and that of will, an unconscious, irrational force, blind and constantly striving throughout all nature. The human condition was one of being constantly torn between the rational process of the conscious mind and the underlying all-pervasive will. Since the will had no element of space and time, it therefore lacked individuation. There being no plurality of individuals, all there was in-itself was Will. There were considerable differences between Schopenhauer’s will and Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself’, particularly in terms of the human capacity to experience the will. After all, movement of the body was a manifestation of the will. And yet there were also reasonable similarities, especially the notion of ‘representation’ in that one’s knowledge was always only perception. For Schopenhauer, the closest one came to ‘knowing’ the will was through contemplation in art and in the felt experience of bodily movement. Nietzsche acknowledges that Kant’s reliance on the transcendental realm as descriptive of reality could easily lead to scepticism and relativism, resulting in an eventual nihilism, a destination that was anathema to Nietzsche’s whole philosophical project. Schopenhauer’s educative value seems to rest for Nietzsche in his ability to face the profound depression he feels at the valuelessness of his existence, and to transform it through contemplation. Aesthetic experience, Schopenhauer claimed, could provide a perception of the world uncluttered by subjective desires. What made Schopenhauer even greater for Nietzsche is that he grappled with the issues of life in an era that would limit his freedom to do so, and yet still emerged the genius. Schacht (1995) argues that Schopenhauer’s radical stance did not fit easily with Western religious and philosophical thought. He clashed with the Christian interpretation of divinity, with contemporary beliefs about rationality and historical progress, and with belief in the possibility of human happiness. The image of a solitary thinker issuing a challenge to accepted tradition is one easily associated with Nietzsche as well, so it could be argued that Nietzsche has assimilated not only Schopenhauer’s ideas but also his style of philosophy, and according to 13

18

See Kaufmann (1974, p. 78).

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

Janaway, “even his nuances of voice and terminology” (1994, p. 104). Other commentators go further: His writings, all of them, are full not just of quotations and paraphrases from Schopenhauer, but of phrases allusions and rhythms both conscious and unconscious. Nietzsche breathed Schopenhauer and cannot be understood without him (Young, 1992, pp. 3-4). Much is made of the difference between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in their treatment of post-Kantian pessimism, and even Nietzsche referred to himself as Schopenhauer’s opposite (EH, The Untimely Ones §3). However, Soll (1988) argues quite convincingly that there is considerable similarity. For a start, he makes the point that Nietzsche’s reference to the ‘truly existent primal unity’ indicates that Nietzsche had accepted and was working with Schopenhauer’s revision of Kant’s theory. Soll differentiates between three aspects of pessimism: the descriptive aspect, a negative view that in human existence pain and suffering predominate over pleasure and satisfaction; an evaluative aspect, which provides an assessment of the overall value of life based on that description; and a recommendatory aspect which suggests how to deal with that evaluation; for example, to withdraw or to embrace suffering. In the preface to the Birth of Tragedy, added as a self-criticism fourteen years after its original publication, Nietzsche distinguishes between a ‘pessimism of strength’ and a ‘pessimism of weakness’ as a means of distancing himself from Schopenhauer’s resignation to a negative valuation of life. This distinction is picked up by Soll (1988) to argue the similarity between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: The pessimism of the weak describes life dominated by suffering and infers from this that life has no value, that one should avoid it as much as possible. The pessimism of the strong describes life in the same way, but still holds it to be valuable and recommends living fully. In as much as Nietzsche takes both to be versions of pessimism, he implicitly locates the essence of pessimism in what the two have in common, i.e., in their descriptive rather than evaluative or recommendatory aspects (Soll, 1988, p. 124). In positing that there are forms of pessimism, Nietzsche identifies the essence of pessimism with the descriptive view of existence, and not with its evaluation or the recommendation about how one should live. In his later writing he sometimes slips away from this distinction and vehemently rejects Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, his pessimism of the strong and of the weak, although they diverge in both their evaluative and recommendatory aspects, are based in a similar description of life: a description, according to Soll, shared not only by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, but also by the Greek tragedy that inspired Nietzsche. Amid the pessimism of nineteenth century German philosophy, life was a continuous struggle – an ideal beginning for Nietzsche’s counter-nihilistic philosophy. Without the need for Hegel’s “dialectical apparatus” (Tanner, 1994, p. 9), Nietzsche steps outside the struggle with nihilism and challenges himself to derive a practical morality from his Schopenhauerian ideal – what he calls a ‘chain of fulfillable duties’. He recognises the danger of setting an unreachable ideal and

19

CHAPTER 2

wonders if it is possible to bring such an elevated goal close enough while it still draws us aloft; in other words, to demonstrate how the Schopenhauerian ideal educates. The practical duties deriving from this picture involved the advancement of culture through the production of Schopenhauerian man: For we know what culture is. Applied to the Schopenhauerian man, it demands that we prepare and promote his repeated production by getting to know what is inimical to it and removing it – in short, that we unwearyingly combat that which would deprive us of the supreme fulfilment of our existence by preventing us from becoming such Schopenhauerian men ourselves (UM III §5). CULTURE AND THE GENIUS

Schacht (1995) argues that for Nietzsche, culture is the sphere in which human animality takes on a spiritual dimension. What is to be promoted is the introduction to, and participation in, cultural life. Nietzsche’s exhortation to become yourself is to be understood not as a call to return to nature or to intensify one’s subjectivity, but rather as an appeal to ascend to culture, and to contribute what one can to its enrichment. What distinguishes man from animal for Nietzsche is our ability to catch a glimpse of ourselves on the path towards man as something high above us. Nietzsche sees nature as needing knowledge for its own redemption and self-enlightenment – the intellect in the service of the will; and yet man spends most of his time trying to escape awareness of his wretched predicament, by focusing on the State, on science, on making money or on being sociable. It is only rare men who emerge from the dreamlike state and lift us up. These rare men are, for Nietzsche, no longer animal, but true men: the philosophers, artists and saints. It is they who create the new metaphors of life; it is through them that Nature is transformed, through the promotion of culture: It is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promote the production of the philosopher the artist and the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of nature. For, as nature needs the philosopher, so does it need the artist, for the achievement of a metaphysical goal, that of its own self-enlightenment, so that it may at last behold as a clear and finished picture that which it could see only obscurely in the agitation of its evolution – for the end, that is to say, of selfknowledge (UM III §5). Nietzsche even established criteria for assessing culture. His five lectures suggest three graduated scales: first the need for philosophy; second the instinct for art; and third, the regard for Greek and Roman antiquity. By these criteria, he judged contemporary German culture to be sadly lacking, with too heavy an emphasis on technicism, empirical science and earning money. He saw his own philosophy as not congruent with the fashion of the day, the mismatch encapsulated in the title of his essay collection Untimely Meditations (also translated as Unfashionable Observations or Thoughts out of Season), emphasising the degree to which Nietzsche saw himself as unconventional.

20

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

Nietzsche argues against the major utilitarian principles, against sacrifice for the good of the State or community, and thereby against social ideals as a guiding philosophy. He compares man to animal and plant species in singling out individual higher exemplars as the goal of existence. In his lectures, he defines the task of mankind not as achieving equality or uniformity, but as working continually at the production of individual great men. Although the botanical idea of species improvement is useful in understanding the generic nature of man as a ‘type’ rather than as specific individuals winning some competition, we must be careful not to include him in any Darwinian metaphor of evolutionary survival. He was often hostile about Darwin’s ideas – especially as they related to mere ‘survival’ (as opposed to ‘flourishing’), and was concerned more with nature as a cultural project. In what he terms a ‘metaphysics of genius’, Nietzsche adopts the metaphor of the nurturing mother to locate the origins of genius not in educational competition, but in a commitment to culture: For the genius to make his appearance; for him to emerge from among the people; to portray the reflected picture, as it were, the dazzling brilliancy of the peculiar colours of this people; to depict the noble destiny of a people in the similitude of an individual in a work which will last for all time, thereby making his nation itself eternal, and redeeming it from the ever shifting element of transient things: all this is possible for the genius only when he has been brought up and come to maturity in the tender care of the culture of a people (FEI III). As well as establishing as a goal the active promotion of culture and the production of genius, Nietzsche also requires hostility towards those influences, habits, laws and institutions which militate against that goal. He claimed that the pseudo-culture of his time not only failed to promote men of culture, but actively stood in their way. Lessing, Winckelmann, Schiller and Goethe were compromised by German culture: Who can tell to what these heroic men were destined to attain if only that true German spirit had gathered them together within the protecting walls of a powerful institution? – that spirit which, without the help of some such institution, drags out an isolated, debased, and degraded existence. All those great men were utterly ruined; and it is only an insane belief in the Hegelian ‘reasonableness of all happenings’ which would absolve you of any responsibility in the matter (FEI IV). The influences identified by Nietzsche as hostile to the promotion of culture are the commercial interests of individuals and the State, the use of fashion and ritual to disguise a nihilistic culture, and a tendency towards control by the sciences. Each of these factors appropriates the idea of culture for its own ends and in return imposes its own parameters for cultural regeneration. Making the link between wealth and the popular conception of culture, Nietzsche offers an insight that foreshadows theories of ‘instrumental rationality’ or ‘economic rationalism’ that underpin today’s market economy. He refers to the

21

CHAPTER 2

currency value of human life as he identifies the chain of conclusions inherent in the commercial production of education: As much knowledge and education as possible, therefore as much demand as possible, therefore as much production as possible, therefore as much happiness and profit as possible – that is the seductive formula (UM III §6). Nietzsche claims that such learning has more to do with the ‘currency value’ of human life than with culture, and his critique of educational institutions draws heavily on this differentiation. While not denying that individuals must learn to take part in the struggle for existence, he argues that all the present institutions are engaged in producing currency rather than culture, and that there is a need for a new type of institution, one that can focus on culture. He was not arguing against the existence of technical schools or the need for a certain degree of cultural reproduction through such trade training. Rather, he advocated the emergence of preparatory ground for those with higher aspirations. However, the State must not be the chief sponsor of culture and must not take charge of any project that would claim to be ‘true’ education either. The problem for Nietzsche with the State’s involvement is that it recognises as culture only what is directly useful to the State itself, purging itself of anything that doesn’t serve the interests of existing institutions. It follows then that State-controlled education was not conducive to the promotion of culture and would have no imperative to promote individual great men. It would instead become a means of self propagation for the State. Nietzsche warns that the resulting enfeeblement of education would no longer confer privileges or inspire respect, and we may even finish up with the most general form of culture – barbarism. Nietzsche took a pragmatic view of modern politics in that he adopted a ‘pitiful toleration’ of the State’s need to foster pseudo-culture to help in the difficult task of governing: to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, envious, malignant, and hence very narrow minded and perverse human beings; and thus to protect the few things that the State has conquered for itself against covetous neighbours and jealous robbers (FEI III). In contrast, he admired the early Greek State and referred to it as ‘the only real home of culture’, in that it provided a protected environment in which the germ of culture could develop. The State acted not as supervisor, regulator and watchman; but as a vigorous and muscular companion and friend, ready for war, accompanying his noble friend through disagreeable reality. According to Nietzsche, culture is subverted not only by the self promotion of the State, but also by the tendency of contemporary man to cover up the ugliness and boredom of life with the beautified form of fashion and ceremony: For that is how the fashionable greed for beautiful form is connected with the ugly content of contemporary man: the former is intended to conceal, the latter to be concealed. To be cultivated means: to hide from oneself how wretched and base one is, how rapacious in going for what one wants, how

22

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

insatiable in heaping it up, how shameless and selfish in enjoying it (UM III §6). Nietzsche also criticises narrow specialisation in education as a deviation from the path of true culture. In that way, his early essays portray science as similar to religion in destroying learning and exploiting man for its own purposes. He argues that scientific education precludes classical education, suggesting that the spheres of science and culture often meet but are never reconciled. Behind Nietzsche’s polemical critique of science and its men of learning is his suspicion of the apparent neutrality of science, and his concerns about the scientists’ disregard for the aesthetics of life, their narrow conventional approach, and the self-serving nature of the community to which they belong. His analysis of the role of science makes derogatory reference to ‘pure, impulseless knowledge’ and ‘servants of truth’, and argues that geniuses and scholars have at all times been at odds with one another, since the scholar wants to kill, dissect and understand nature. In contrast, the genius wants to augment nature. In response to the oppressive social and intellectual climate, Nietzsche was quite clear that the time was not right for the production of the genius, and that the proclaimed interest in furthering culture by the State, by the money-makers and by the men of science was merely self interest and self-affirmation, and a purely instrumental attempt to define culture in a way that would sustain an inadequate status quo. In contrast with Nietzsche’s aristocratic notion of ‘true culture’, the idea of emancipation for the masses characterises what he sees as the worthless character of modern education, in that it is an attempt to democratise the rights of the genius and to overthrow ‘the most sacred hierarchy in the kingdom of the intellect’: the servitude of the masses, their submissive obedience, and their instinct of loyalty to the rule of genius: The education of the masses cannot, therefore, be our aim; but rather the education of a few picked men for great and lasting works. We well know that a just posterity judges the collective intellectual state of a time only by those few great and lonely figures of the period, and gives its decision in accordance with the manner in which they are recognised, encouraged, and honoured, or, on the other hand, in which they are snubbed, elbowed aside, and kept down (FEI III). He argues that great leaders are necessary, and that all culture begins with obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with subjection14 . He talks of an ‘eternal hierarchy’ and a ‘pre-established harmony’ in which leaders must have followers and followers must have a leader. His model here is the transformation of a weary sounding orchestra when a genius is substituted for a spiritless conductor.

14

Although out of fashion today, such vocabulary could accurately describe today’s system of modern apprenticeships with their subordination and obedience to a master tradesman.

23

CHAPTER 2

It is as if this genius, in his lightning transmigration, had entered into these mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed forth out of them all. Now look and listen – you can never listen enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming, now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening. of every muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and followers, and how in the hierarchy of spirits everything impels us towards the establishment of a like organisation. You can divine from my simile what I would understand by a true educational institution, and why I am very far from recognising one in the present type of university (FEI V). EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

According to Nietzsche, calls for academic freedom and massed education undermine true culture, promoting instead an ‘unoriginal decent average’ and ‘uniform mediocrity’, in which everybody is regarded as gifted for literature and considered as capable of holding important opinions. Although an elevated destiny is only available to a small elite, Nietzsche still advocates a mass commitment to the project of culture: Here lies the whole secret of culture — namely, that an innumerable host of men struggle to achieve it and work hard to that end, ostensibly in their own interests, whereas at bottom it is only in order that it may be possible for the few to attain to it (FEI I). It is important to note that Nietzsche does not want to destroy existing institutions or to undermine the role they serve in disciplined training. He saw these institutions as living monuments of important steps in the progress of civilisation or as furniture of a bygone age, although preserved in his notion of Bildung (TI, What the Germans Lack §5). What he wanted was something over and above the existing schools, institutions that would focus on the development of culture. Education would have to move beyond the State-driven reproduction of scholars, civil servants, money-makers and cultural philistines, a path which he saw as difficult and likely to marginalise the solitary philosopher who championed such a revolution. The only example Nietzsche cites as an attempt to create one of these new institutions is the Burschenschaft, a German students’ association founded at Jena in the early nineteenth century, to promote truth, honour and freedom within a patriotic tradition. The role of the new educational institution would be to provide support and protection for those committed to his idea of culture. He talked of a new order of schools as the ‘consecrated home of all higher and nobler culture’, where the dedicated few could prepare within themselves and around them for the birth of the genius and the ripening of his work. What this meant in practice was to assemble the free spirits of the age together and introduce them to Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Such a move required withstanding social opinion and religious dogma, and becoming aware of the political distortions embedded in normalised

24

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

concepts such as ‘progress’, ‘universal education’, ‘national’, ‘cultural struggle’ and the ‘modern state’. Although Schopenhauer’s name might occupy the headline on Nietzsche’s agenda, it is, nevertheless, clearly Nietzsche’s own philosophy that is being advanced in his eulogising of Schopenhauer. In line with the great importance he placed on our educators of the past and in keeping with his background as a philologist, Nietzsche advocated discipline in the mother tongue as the path to real culture and aesthetic judgments. He saw such discipline and habit as the means to inculcate a feeling for the greatness of the classical writers and a respect for the culture of ancient Greece. It was this feeling that is encapsulated in his plea for recognition of the ‘true German spirit’: linked to the Greeks by the noblest ties, and shown by its past history to have been steadfast and courageous, pure and lofty in its aims, its faculties qualifying it for the high task of freeing modern man from the curse of modernity (FEI IV). Again we find Nietzsche trying to liberate man from the strictures of fashion and convention, this time through his awareness of the defining power of language as a cultural medium. He criticised the ornate style of literary men and the elegance of journalists as unsuitable for the cultural leadership role they were trying to play, as they were merely ‘servants of the moment’. There was no hope for a higher notion of education through State-funded efforts either. In his early lectures on education (FEI), Nietzsche saw the State as necessarily furthering its own interests in terms of maximising the utility value of its citizens and promoting a culture that would enhance government. Tanner (1994) observes that one of the characteristics of nineteenth century German philosophy was the idea of adversarial opposition, in which the outcome is more fruitful than anything that could be produced by either of the opponents going it alone. Nietzsche’s philosophy is no exception, involving opposition between the instinctual, amoral energy of Dionysus and the ordered and beautiful form of Apollo, the non rational versus the civilised, the wild versus the refined. Of special importance to him was the notion of overcoming adversity, leading some commentators (e.g., Salomé, 1988) to suggest that his philosophy may have been driven by a lifelong personal struggle against his illness. Whether driven by personal circumstance or not, it is this personal struggle and self-overcoming that typifies Nietzsche’s later formulation of the Übermensch or ‘overman’ concept15. Kaufmann (1974) dispels the myth of Nietzsche’s overman as manifesting hostility and violence, preferring instead the explanation of Übermensch as an overcoming of adverse conditions and an attempt to realise his own unique individuality. Nietzsche’s early admiration for Schopenhauer seems to have been driven in part by his respect for the adverse conditions Schopenhauer faced up to and overcame, including a ‘culturally pretentious’ mother. Nietzsche notes among the 15

The term Übermensch is preferred here to its various translations (commonly ‘overman’ or ‘superman’), since the English words carry their own connotations not present in the German text. English terms are used, however, where the intentions of a cited author are more accurately represented, or where distinction between interpretations is required – particularly where a sense of ‘overcoming’ is intended.

25

CHAPTER 2

positive qualities that allowed Schopenhauer to rigorously maintain his path: the rugged manly character of his father; his focus on men rather than books; reverence for truth and not government; his international experience; his dislike for a strong state; his refusal to be involved in politics; his ability to recognise the genius in himself and others; his financial independence; and especially, his freedom. His lack of training as a scholar was also celebrated by Nietzsche. These qualities not only allowed Nietzsche to celebrate Schopenhauer as aspiring Übermensch, but also described much of the predicament Nietzsche himself had to overcome to find freedom in his own life, lending some credence to Nietzsche’s own later observation that his early essay was autobiography. For Nietzsche though, there is little likelihood of freedom in the modern state and he questions whether truth is being served when the freedom of philosophers in universities might be compromised by the politics involved in their need to earn a living. In this respect, he even points the finger at Kant as a university scholar for being cautious and subservient. In contrast, he saw early Greek philosophers as free from such state control as they were not paid by the State, and regrets that there would be no place for a Plato or a Schopenhauer in the modern university. While his criticism of state control of philosophy includes the problem of the wage-earning relationship, his difficulties with the State go deeper than that. He has ideological concerns with Hegel’s argument that the State was the highest good, in that a philosopher employed by the State must acknowledge as higher than truth, the good of the State and everything the State considers necessary for its own wellbeing: for example, a certain form of religion, a particular social order or military regulations. Where raw truth may not be in the state’s best interest, he suggests the state may have better use for half truth or even error: If, however, a man should arise who really gave the impression of intending to apply the scalpel of truth to all things, including the body of the State, then the state would, since it affirms its own existence before all else, be justified in expelling such a man and treating him as an enemy: just as it expels and treats as an enemy a religion which sets itself above the state and desires to be its judge (UM III §8). Nietzsche also objects to other aspects of university-based philosophy, including control over selection of academic staff, and what today might be called curriculum delivery and content. Such control for Nietzsche actively prevents the production of the genius and takes the human spirit out of philosophy. Of particular concern to him is the degree to which philosophy has been taken over by science, so that it no longer bears any relationship to life. In short, he fears that the whole of philosophy is being diminished and advocates the separation of philosophy from the State and from the academy. Where Nietzsche wants to go with philosophy is to establish a higher tribunal where pure philosophy would act as a cultural judge, and supervise the educational institutions free of the Zeitgeist, and without official authority or salary. He sees that philosophy under the yoke of the university has no dignity or fire, and is no longer ‘dangerous’. At the conclusion of his essay on Schopenhauer,

26

NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATION

Nietzsche makes a final plea for the importance of philosophy and its need to be powerful and fearsome: ‘Beware’, says Emerson, ‘when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.’ It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end (UM III §8). Although much of Nietzsche’s explicit focus on education was in the early years of his writing, one of his last published works (TI) carries his assessment of the German ‘character’, in which he claims that the Germans have distanced themselves from serious intellectual pursuit, and achieved a mediocrity instead. With the State’s intensified focus on power, politics, economic affairs, parliamentary institutions and military interests, Nietzsche laments the degeneration of German education, which, he says, has lost not only its proper focus – culture; but also, with one or two exceptions, the means of achieving it – educated teachers. As institutions, he sees the higher schools (their teachers, their curricula and their instructional aims) involved in the efficient ‘breaking-in’ of numberless young men for the future service of the State. Against that horror, Nietzsche contrasts his vision of education, reiterating his early concern with culture as the focus: I shall straightaway set down the three tasks for the sake of which one requires educators. One has to learn to see, one has to learn to think, one has to learn to speak and write: the end in all three is a noble culture (TI, What the Germans Lack §6). However, this is not just a reference to the physical or maturational aspects of seeing and thinking, or to the technical aspects of speaking and writing. Encapsulated within the word ‘seeing’ is the training of the ‘eye’ to patience, the exercise of a ‘strong will-power’, and the ability to defer final decisions. The argument is against the urgency of modern ‘objectivity’ in favour of a learner who is ‘slow’, ‘mistrustful’, and ‘resistant’; a learner who, “in an attitude of hostile calm one will allow the strange, the novel, of every kind to approach one first – one will draw one’s hand back from it” (ibid.). Similarly, learning to think is seen as needing not only instruction and mastery, but also the intellectual ‘light feet’ – a dexterity that comes from understanding subtle nuances, so that thinking might be conducted as a form of dancing, rather than the plodding mediocrity that characterised much of scholarly life. Obviously some of Nietzsche’s commentary is specific to his personal circumstance and the political era in which he is writing, but significant themes can be seen as relevant to today’s educators. Nietzsche’s writing about education is quite concise, although to assess its relevance, allowance must be made for a cultural shift away from nineteenth century socialist trends and away from the German preoccupation of the period with such constructs as ‘character’ and ‘spirit’. Similar allowance must be made for linguistic transformation on interpreting what we would now see as archaic references to terms such as ‘genius’ and the ‘saint’, along with the inevitable strangeness of expression that emerges in

27

CHAPTER 2

translating across different languages. Despite these cultural and linguistic differences though, it is possible to assemble a coherent statement that reflects Nietzsche’s ideas, while at the same time having relevance to today’s educational project. From the preceding discussion, a number of themes emerge from Nietzsche’s perspective on education, not as discreet entities but as interdependent aspects of an overall philosophy. In effect, for Nietzsche, a normative view of education is based on a full experience of life, with an overriding concern for the strengthening of culture as a way of elevating nature, including embracing our non-rational humanity. Exemplary figures are to be admired and emulated, with the artist, the philosopher and the saint as metaphors representing the ability and the courage to go beyond current strictures – both internal and external. At the level of the individual, it is important to allow for and encourage the promotion of individual difference, especially in the emergence of individual greatness (the ‘genius’) without subjecting that emergence to the levelling of egalitarian ideals. For education to follow its natural path, it must be outside of state control and go beyond not only the service of the State, but also beyond the strictures of scientific knowledge or economic rationality as its raison d’être. From within an oppressive culture, intellectual independence requires a rebellious spirit to challenge the disabling aspects of tradition and custom and to face up to hardship with honesty and a cheerful disposition. To conduct oneself along this difficult individual path while at the same time building a strong culture obviously requires attention to the mode of communication, and thus Nietzsche’s emphasis on a disciplined ability to think, speak and write. Much of the above vision is encapsulated in Nietzsche’s figure of the Übermensch, and that through the continuous engagement with facing up to and overcoming difficulties, such a figure provides an ethical basis from which to address the sometimes competing interests of individual and society. Nietzsche makes the call for freedom for the gifted individual, a call that on the one hand might be seen as merely a plea for his own recognition, but that on the other hand might be viewed more expansively as a call for cultural enrichment, in harmony with the development of exceptional individuals. His call is seen as a useful starting place in developing an educational philosophy that attends to ethical issues in education, although the early explication of his educational thinking cannot be divorced from the social and political developments that nurtured the philosophical period in which Nietzsche flourished. To this end, the next chapter focuses on the period in European intellectual history that formed the backdrop for Nietzsche’s awakening.

28

CHAPTER 3

NIETZSCHE, THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

NIETZSCHE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH EARLIER PHILOSOPHERS

This chapter explores selected aspects of the philosophical period that preceded and nurtured the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It argues that an understanding of German Idealism, and in particular of Kant and Schopenhauer, is crucial to an appreciation of Nietzsche’s commitment to explanations of the ‘self’ as a dynamic process of becoming rather than as a centred ‘being’. Such an understanding also sheds light on Nietzsche’s rejection of universal reason as the basis for moral goodness, and thus on his critique of the basis of liberal education. ‘German Idealism’ was not, however, a stand-alone period or event in Europe. Rather, one analyst argues, “[its] aims and problems become intelligible only in the context of the Enlightenment or Aufklärung, which had dominated intellectual life in Germany since the middle of the eighteenth century” (Ameriks, 2000, p. 18). This chapter begins then, by locating Nietzsche in relation to other philosophical developments. This is followed by an interpretive genealogy of Enlightenment thinking as a groundwork for the transcendental idealism of Kant and its nemesis in Nietzsche’s critique of morality. Nietzsche was at pains to portray himself as standing outside the philosophical fashions of his time – an ‘untimely’ thinker and a ‘free spirit’ preparing the way for the “philosophers of the future” (BGE §44). However, his ideas did not arise spontaneously in an intellectual vacuum. He engaged with contemporary thinkers, both inside and outside philosophy, in an intense and sustained manner. Small (2001) traces Nietzsche’s engagement with the theories of his contemporaries as the context for the development of some of his key ideas. Significant among these are the theories of Spir and Dühring about ‘time’ in relation to Nietzsche’s theme of eternal recurrence, Teichmüller’s published work on ‘perspectivism’ in relation to Nietzsche’s radical perspectivism, and Nietzsche’s focus on scientific concepts such as explanation, causality and atomism in relation to mechanistic models of science prevalent in his day. Paul Rée, another of Nietzsche’s contemporaries, exerted a strong influence on Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality with his publication The Origin of the Moral Sensations (Rée, 2003), providing a naturalistic explanation for what counts as morality, and attributing the derivation of concepts such as ‘goodness’ and ‘justice’ to tribal survival and social utility, although having long since forgotten their social origins. Rée’s portrayal, like Nietzsche’s later genealogy of morality (GM), includes a genealogy of ‘justice’ brought about through punishment. The similarity was marked enough for one publisher to advertise Nietzsche as “a

29

CHAPTER 3

follower of Rée’s philosophical programme” (Rée, 2003, p. xxviii). Even a letter from Nietzsche concedes that his own book Human – All Too Human might be a work of “Réealism” (ibid.), although Nietzsche’s treatment of morality was more radical than Rée’s, incorporating the aspect of power and outdoing Rée in the extent of depravity he saw in traditional morality. This is not to belittle Nietzsche’s creativity, so much as to show that “his independence and originality developed in dialogue with other thinkers… [and can be] appreciated all the more by being placed in the context of his relations to other philosophers” (Small, 2001, p. 1). Obviously, Nietzsche did not rely solely on his contemporaries. Nineteenth century German philosophy emerged in the shadow of Kant, whose critiques provided contexts in which such dialogue could take place, and whose ideas were the focus of much of Nietzsche’s criticism. Nietzsche read widely and his work portrays many other influences, notably Hegel and Schopenhauer; with his musician friend and onetime mentor, Richard Wagner, also significant in the development of the young Nietzsche’s romantic patriotism. Even though Nietzsche was later explicit in rejecting his intellectual predecessors, they still continued to influence his thinking, eventually as models of inadequacy against which to contrast his own thought16. Before Nietzsche’s time, Western Renaissance artists had already shifted their attention away from the heavenly realm, to a general renewal and rebirth of interest in the dignity and inherent value of man. The move was reflected in the political, religious and social institutions of the period, particularly in the arts and in philosophy. Typical was the architectural shift away from ornate Gothic cathedrals with spires pointing heavenwards, to a resurgence of interest in neoclassical forms; particularly the Roman arch (Hale, 1965) as a signifier of worldly humanism. Although the church maintained its patronage, the Renaissance had seen a growing tendency towards secularisation of musical production, with the focus on entertainment as much as worship (Wold & Cykler, 1985). The end of the 15th century had seen developments in printing technology and a corresponding erosion of the authority of medieval scholars and theologians. The dominant intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism, a philosophy that emphasised the dignity and worth of the individual based on the idea that people are rational beings with the capacity for truth and goodness. The Renaissance saw a revival of Greek and Roman studies with a focus on sensory rather than religious experience.17 The medieval religious view of the world was supplanted by a mechanistic model as the physical sciences assumed a more dominant role in explaining the universe. Copernicus proposed the solar system with the Sun at the centre of the earth’s revolution, challenging Ptolemy’s model

16

17

30

As late as 1888, Nietzsche devotes a whole paper (with postscripts and epilogue) to his earlier “Wagnerizing” (CW: Preface), i.e. his devotion to the decadence and sickness inherent in “all modern humaneness” (ibid.) and epitomised by Wagner and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche’s first book (BT), published in 1872, echoed Renaissance calls to the classical period, celebrating the ancient Greek embrace of tragedy, valorising Dionysian revelry as a tonic for religious conformity and Apollonian social graces.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

which had prevailed as wisdom since the 2nd century (Distante, 2000), lending his name to Kant’s later critique of pure reason as a ‘Copernican Revolution’. In the development of humanism and modernity, liberal thought promoted the dignity of humanity, incorporating the twin threads of freedom and equality. The rise of literacy, growing affluence, and the spread of publishing facilitated the emergence of a “secular intelligentsia” (Porter, 1990) able to challenge the clergy’s proprietary rights to power through knowledge. Nineteenth century German philosophy was to a large extent underpinned by the Cartesian framework (Bracken, 1999), by Kant’s metaphysics as a continuation of Enlightenment philosophy and the improvement of the human condition through reasoned thought (Ameriks, 1999). Through the work of such philosophers as Descartes and Kant, feudal allegiances, religious fundamentalism and the divine right of kings gave way to the ideal of the rational human being as the basis for ethical responsibility. After centuries of Christian monotheism, it is not surprising that the individual ‘person’ that evolved from the Cartesian cogito (through Kantian reason into modernity) was an individuated entity. The rational ‘self’ is the subject of modernity and of Enlightenment thought, and so evolved as the focus for education in Western society. Based on the idea of the reasoned will, the Kantian subject is supposedly capable of free choice and moral autonomy. ENLIGHTENMENT

‘The Enlightenment’ is a term used to describe the trends in Western intellectual thought up to the end of the eighteenth century, typified by challenges to scripture and the classics as traditional sources of authority, and a growing reliance on reason as the basis for knowledge – reason “unhampered by belief in revelation, by submission to authority, by deference to established customs and institutions” (Copleston, 1958, p. 34). The term ‘enlightenment’ is often used to signify an emergence from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason and science. Kant, for example, depicted ‘enlightenment’ as the public use of reason, as freedom from religious or monarchial authority, and as overcoming ‘laziness and cowardice’ as a means of release from ‘man’s self-incurred tutelage’: Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!18 ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’ – that is the motto of enlightenment (Kant, 1990, p. 83). Although reason is often seen as a central value, many commentators (e.g., Copleston, 1958; 1960; Hampson, 1968; Porter, 1990; Inwood, 1995; Marshall, 1996a; Popkin, 1999) argue for a more expansive view of the Enlightenment. They highlight values like autonomy, freedom, equality, curiosity and scepticism, and political ideas like reform, citizenship and democracy. The broad picture includes 18

‘Dare to be wise!’ The footnote in the 1990 edition notes the original source as Horace’s Ars Poetica and that this was the motto adopted by the society of the Friends of Truth – an important circle in the German Enlightenment.

31

CHAPTER 3

themes as diverse as Kant’s autonomy, Goethe’s caution about the limits of knowledge, Rousseau’s attack on the idea of progress, and the location of moral development in personal relationships rather than abstract principles (à la Rousseau and Hume). Rather than limiting the Enlightenment to themes such as the progress of society and the liberation of human beings through their use of reason, the Enlightenment might be conceptualised as broadly as a “defence of difference” (Marshall, 1996a, p. 175). Despite the slightly tongue-in-cheek conjecture that “the Enlightenment was what one thinks it was” (Hampson, 1968, p. 9), there was a view of humanity as freeing itself from prejudice and superstition with a “beneficent Providence” (ibid., p. 155) regulating the course of nature. Hampson suggests that, with its focal point in the salon where men and women enjoyed each other’s company and combined intellectual speculation with bienséance, the Enlightenment was an ‘attitude of mind’ rather than a course in science or philosophy; that the Enlightenment was a release from “centuries of baronial oppression and ecclesiastical superstition” (ibid., p. 149); and that in its popular appeal, “the age might more accurately be described as one of reasonableness than of reason”19 (ibid., p. 157). Proponents of Enlightenment thought shared a general commitment to criticising injustice; to emancipating man through knowledge, education and science from the chains of ignorance, error, superstition and theological dogma; to instilling a new mood of hope for a better future; and to practical action for creating greater prosperity, fairer laws, milder government, religious tolerance, intellectual freedom, expert administration and heightened individual selfawareness (Porter, 1990). A flavour of the Enlightenment might be gleaned from its legacy for Western society in the inheritance of ideals of popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and liberalism (Inwood, 1995). Porter (1990) sees exponents of the Enlightenment20 as men of the world: journalists, propagandists, activists, seeking not just to understand the world but to change it – a dangerous business in the face of punitive countermeasures taken against those undermining church and political authority21. Although commentators might concur on some general themes in Enlightenment thought, it is not clear exactly where the boundaries lay in terms of who was involved or to what extent. Porter (1990) takes exception to Peter Gay’s depiction of the Enlightenment as the work of a small group of European and North American people who were familiar with each other’s efforts: the Frenchmen – 19

20

Hampson points out that it was this very reasonableness that was soon to “provoke the scorn of the Sturm und Drang movement in Germany, of Rousseau and eventually of Romantics everywhere, as a denial of inspiration and of individual genius” (Hampson, 1968, p. 158). This theme was a feature of Nietzsche’s admiration for Schopenhauer. Porter (1990) notes that although they called themselves ‘philosophers’, their activity would not align with what is seen as philosophy today. Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie defined the philosophe as one who: trampling on prejudice, tradition, universal consent, authority, in a word, all that enslaves most minds, dares to think for himself (Porter, 1990, p. 3)

21

32

See for example, Foucault (1977) for a detailed description of the treatment meted out to one deemed guilty.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, d’Alembert, Turgot and Condorcet; the Britons – Hume and Gibbon; Rousseau from Geneva; German-born d’Holbach, Kant and Herder; and the American Benjamin Franklin. Such a limited historical analysis subscribes to the ‘great men’ theory, ignoring the rise in articulate and literate culture throughout Europe that would have paved the way for such change. As contributors to an edited collection of essays on the history of Western philosophy (Popkin, 1999), a number of writers suggest that the Enlightenment was a broader movement than this small band of acquaintances. For example, Manfred Kuehn dubs Moses Mendelssohn, a contemporary of Kant, “leader of the Enlightenment in Germany” (p. 475) for his efforts to reconcile religious belief and aesthetics with the ideals of reason. Although Rousseau’s philosophy of ‘nature’ is generally associated with the Romanticist movement, Popkin (p. 470) argues that Rousseau’s scepticism also added something to the critical tenor of the Enlightenment in France. In the same edited collection, Bracken (p. 485) talks of the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ and the contribution of Frances Hutcheson, Thomas Reid and Adam Smith to the development of Scottish ‘common sense’22. Others who were to have various levels of contribution to Enlightenment thought include the earlier rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz), the physical scientists (Copernicus and the later Isaac Newton), the empiricist Condillac, and political and moral philosophers John Locke and Adam Ferguson. Thus ‘the Enlightenment’ might be interpreted as a populist evolutionary movement across a broad front as much as a spearhead of intellectual radicalism23. The Enlightenment marked a key stage in the decline of the church and the growth of modern secularism. It also provided a basis for political and economic liberalism and for humanitarian reform. However, the secular spirit of the Enlightenment by no means put an end to religion. Rather, religious concerns were displaced – at least among the rich and well educated – from the centre of life to the periphery (Gay, 1966, p. 31). Gay attributes this evolution in religious thought to the seventeenth century Platonists, a small group of clergymen and academics at Cambridge University, who proposed to settle doctrinal differences between various religious sects by reducing the Christian message to a few relatively simple and reasonable tenets. Christianity was, they said, “essentially the practice of reason, the exercise of virtue, and mystical contemplation” (ibid., p. 32). Reason and faith were not contradictory, but mutually enhancing, with religious instruction able to provide a rational basis for ethical conduct. As critics, the philosophes were exclusively neither ‘rationalist’ nor ‘irrationalist’: 22

Burchell (1991) argues that the Scottish Enlightenment was concomitant with the development of civil society, ‘natural liberty’ and an “individualising art of government” (p. 122), in which Adam Smith promoted economic egoism (the ‘invisible hand’) in the belief that: no sovereign, no ‘single person, … council or senate’ can ‘safely be trusted’ with the authority over the pursuit of private interest (p. 133).

23

Porter (1990) cites the work of a recent author, Margaret Jacob, who argues for the existence of a radical Enlightenment before the ‘classic’ Enlightenment associated with Montesquieu and Voltaire. This chapter’s interest in the Enlightenment is in relation to German Idealism as the seedbed for Nietzsche’s work, although it is considered important to note the major impact of the Enlightenment because of its profound effect on Kant and his followers.

33

CHAPTER 3

They criticised all such simple-minded extremes, because they were above all critics, aiming to put human intelligence to use as an engine for understanding human nature, for analysing man as a sociable being, and the natural environment in which he lived (Porter, 1990, p. 3). Deistic faith was evident in the work of many Enlightenment philosophers.24 Locke, for example, argued that the proof of God’s existence lay in his visible works – paving the way for the rationality of empiricism as the basis of knowledge. Locke’s reasoning is based on two ideas: first, that all knowledge derives from reasoning about our ideas; and second, that all non-complex ideas originate in experience (Shand, 1993). He is able to maintain his pious stance, since he does not call into question any innate (i.e., god-given) principles or truths; for if there was some innate knowledge, it would have to be true since it is god-given. By fixing the gaze on experience of external material objects, Locke is able to leave God in his place while accepting that empirical knowledge is limited in terms of certainty. The deists did not deny the existence of God, but saw the whole universe as testament to his presence and skill as creator: God had created the world, created laws for its operation, and had then withdrawn to leave his creation to run itself. The deistic conception of God implied that there were universal moral laws which all reasonable men could discover. Man was to find religious and moral truth through his powers of reason, rather than through divine inspiration or clerical authority. Given the elevation of the status of reason, it is easy to see why deism still flourished in the age of Enlightenment. However, Gay argues, it was a philosophically unstable compound of belief and non-belief: It denied supernatural intervention in the affairs of the universe, but it affirmed the supernatural existence of God – and its arguments for both positions were based on reason…. 18th century intellectuals progressed finally to a disdainful belief that abandoned Christianity entirely and substituted a good society of men on earth for the kingdom of God in heaven (Gay, 1966, p. 40). Voltaire, the prolific French philosopher and polemicist, furthered Enlightenment thought with his attacks on ecclesiastical wealth and property, on the Church’s political power and corruption, and on suppression of free thought. Although he denounced the church and the power of the clergy, he believed in the existence of God. He rejected the irrational and incomprehensible and called upon his contemporaries to act against intolerance, tyranny and superstition. His morality was founded on a belief in freedom of thought and respect for all individuals (Distante, 2000). Throughout Rousseau’s work, the individual is charged with following his own conscience, irrespective of the conventions of a society, since “beneath the selfinterested sophistication of social man lay natural feelings that were an infallible guide to moral action” (Hampson, 1968, p. 196). Away from social contamination, 24

34

Ameriks (2000) includes Fichte, Schelling and Kierkegaard among those whose philosophy was compatible with a supernatural being.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

man was most likely to hear his ‘inner voice’ and the moral law in his own heart. This was not, however, to constitute any kind of goodness as a ‘state of nature’, since in nature there was no morality – no social basis for good and bad: “By nature men are neither kings, nobles, courtiers, nor millionaires. All men are born poor and naked, all are liable to the sorrows of life, its disappointments, its ills, its needs, its suffering of every kind; and all are condemned at length to die. This is what it really means to be a man, this is what no mortal can escape. Begin then with the study of the essentials of humanity, that which really constitutes mankind (Rousseau, 1993, p. 219). Civilised society was seen to have corrupted the ‘natural state’ of mankind in the constitution of his intellectual, moral and social being. It was, then, the function of education to ameliorate this socialisation. Rousseau was not naïve enough to believe in a return to some idyllic solitude, since without the social there could be no empathy and no love. Rather, the desired state could only be achieved through a social contract – an acquiescence to a General Will – a normative notion of Government that required the dissolution of competing wants in promotion of the common good. The General Will was to be arrived at through a shared understanding among citizens about what they believed that common good to be – not based on their private interests, but on whether or not it conforms to the “general will which is their own” (Rousseau, cited in Grofman & Feld, 1988, p. 568). Thus the consensus was not a means of combining divergent interests but rather a quest for ‘truth’, albeit through man’s fallibility. Rousseau believed it was possible to combine liberty with law by instituting a state in which men could make the laws they lived under. It would entail “a covenant being made whereby individuals yielded their natural rights to a sovereign, but that sovereign would be none other than the people themselves united in one legislative body” (Cranston, 1991, p. 306). Through a series of autobiographical confessions, Rousseau also posits the ‘self’ as an object of inquiry25 using his own experience as the focus. However, to delineate the ‘self’ from that which is not the self requires an existential divorce from ‘the other: that which is “alien and inhospitable” (Marshall, 1996a, p. 166); resulting in a sense of “deprivation, alienation, and isolation” (ibid., p. 167). At base, Rousseau’s concerns are familiar: “the need for love and a loving community, the love of liberty and impatience with servitude, the desire to be oneself and to find one’s own happiness” (France, 1987, p. 107). Although espousing the ‘inner voice’ of moral conscience and the value of freedom – and for this reason often considered Romanticist, Rousseau was still an advocate for Enlightenment reason: “Reason alone teaches us to know good and evil” (Rousseau, 1993, p. 39).

25

This was done in a series of autobiographical confessions which were later critiqued and rewritten during the period from 1765 to 1778 (Marshall, 1996a).

35

CHAPTER 3

IDEALISM

Extending Locke's doubts about knowledge of the world outside the mind, Berkeley argued that there is no evidence for the existence of such a world, because the only things that one can observe are one's own sensations, and these are in the mind. Berkeley's idealism mediated against scepticism and atheism, in that he believed that the limits of what it is intelligible or meaningful to talk about must refer to something perceivable in our experience (Shand, 1993). David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, was a strong promoter of scepticism and empiricism. Influenced by Locke and Berkeley, he claimed that all metaphysical assertions about things that cannot be directly perceived are meaningless. He went even further, however, endeavouring to prove that reason and rational judgments are merely habitual associations of distinct sensations or experiences (Distante, 2000). Ameriks (2000) notes that the British tradition of idealism is often associated with ‘negative’ metaphysical or epistemological doctrines – “the thesis that matter or the external world is not independently real, or at least that it cannot be known, or known with certainty, as real” (p. 8). The term is assumed to indicate some kind of anti-realism, as if ‘ideal’ must always mean ‘not real’, whereas Plato’s ‘ideal’ was the exact opposite. The word ‘negative’ denotes that things taken as real do not exist at all. A positivist interpretation of ‘idealism’, in contrast, does not necessarily deny existence or project that existence into ‘another’ world, so much as denote its optimal form. Such a notion of ‘idealism’ involves recognising that entities may have a higher, or “more ‘ideal’ nature” (Ameriks, 2000, p. 8). Fichte, Schelling and Hegel refused to accept cognition as simply the effect of receiving data in perception. Ameriks (2000) notes that late eighteenth century German philosophers welcomed the radical scientific strands of the late Enlightenment, and tried to elaborate dynamic, chemical and organic models that aimed, not at denying the existence of given natural forms, but at “affirming deep (‘ideal’) structures that make these forms comprehensible as a whole and that force us to go beyond the meagre passive vocabulary of mechanics” (p. 9). He comments too on the irony of the fact that the ‘idealist’ German thinkers in this period took themselves to mean something that is precisely the opposite of anything like negative metaphysical idealism” or a “denial of public material objects” (ibid.). Even this positive reading, however, has its problems in that it is so elaborately systematic. Even if there is no intention to deny nature and experience, there is frequently an insistence on offering an absolute philosophical ground in the manner of pure science – “an urge that was also characteristic of empiricist foundationalism and the positivist movement into the twentieth century” (Ameriks, 2000, p. 10). In an examination of ‘German idealism’, it is important to remember that there was no such political or geographical entity as ‘Germany’ at the time. The territory had been divided by the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 into a series of principalities – some relatively large, some as small as a village – as remnants of

36

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

the Holy Roman Empire.26 Religious divisions overshadowed any shared culture – “the most that was shared was a language (of sorts) and a certain accidental geographical proximity” (Pinkard, 2002, p. 2). Even if the historical, geographical difficulties were ironed out, it is difficult to specify exactly what is meant by ‘German idealism’ or even ‘idealism’ generally, since even if there was consensus about who should be considered within the category, there is considerable philosophical difference among those usually included. German Idealism, Ameriks (2000) argues, arose in response to major cultural upheavals such as the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the rise of romanticism; it challenged the unquestioned authority of modern science; and contributed significantly to the rise of nationalism and conservatism within Germany, and also to the worldwide growth of liberalism, extending into the spheres of science, philosophy, literature, art and social life. Despite the broad focus and disparate interpretations, however, there are some common features in its various manifestations. German Idealism privileged thought over sensation, ideas over empirical observations, and an organic view of life over mechanistic models. Nature was seen as spiritual, the field of ethics was based on norms of universal validity, and history was interpreted as a rational process. As a broad philosophical sweep, the period incorporates the work of Leibniz, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Herbart and Schopenhauer; but perhaps the most significant influence, particularly for Nietzsche, was that of Kant. It was Kant’s dual world that made room for both the empirical world of science and the rational world of morality. Several factors had contributed to the particular character of the Enlightenment in Germany and thus to Kant’s monumental status as a moral philosopher. A notable early influence was that of Leibniz, who provided a distinctively religious flavour, substituting the mechanical view of nature with a system of soul-like ‘monads’ – unchanging and unique entities that depend on God for their existence and that stand behind the world of appearance (Shand, 1993). A pre-established harmony exists between these monads, the relation being functional rather than causal, and discoverable as laws of nature through observation and experimentation. Although an empiricist in this respect, Leibniz was a rationalist in that he believed reason could grasp the true nature of reality that lies behind appearances. Like Kant, he imagined an a priori world not accessible to human knowledge. Leibniz’s monads, as god-given entities, provided some ground for the moral worth of the individual. Lessing is credited with being the first representative of the movement to liberate himself from conventional theology in favour of the arts, literature and practical philosophy (Copleston, 1960); a move intensified and enhanced by Herder, whose rebellion against the rationalism of the Enlightenment significantly 26

Pinkard (2002) refers to a ‘Holy Roman Empire’ which was not ‘holy’; nor was it Roman; nor was it an Empire. Politically, Germany was not a state, a confederation, or a treaty organisation, but a “wholly sui generis political entity difficult to describe in any political terms familiar to us now” (p. 1).

37

CHAPTER 3

influenced the development of German literature and romantic thought. In Herder’s thought, too, is the idea of harnessing “science, art and all the other institutions to humanise man, to develop the perfection of humanity” (ibid., p. 144). In examining the legacy of idealism in German philosophy, Pinkard (2002) describes the eventual despondency that developed after Kant and Hegel, noting a shifting of faith to the authority of natural sciences (and later to the social sciences) – still a faith in ‘reason’ itself, albeit in a different form. The despondency is attributed to the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the revolutionary disappointments of 1848-1849, after which, progress was to be signified by materialism and industry rather than by development of spirit. Technology and industry were to become the new paradigms for progressive thought and replace idealism as the dominant metaphor, eventually to be overtaken by Darwin’s evolutionary science and the resurgence of naturalism as the secular authority. Alongside the imperial triumphalism of Germany after unification in 1871 and the assertions of superiority by the increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie, Pinkard (2002) notes a “spiritual exhaustion” (p. 357) – hardly the Kantian promise of mankind’s ‘release’ from its ‘self-incurred tutelage’. The paradox of modernity under Kantian reason – and possibly the source of ‘exhaustion’ – relates to the idea that the moral self is continually involved in rationalising its own actions while at the same time not able to rely on anything outside of itself to underpin its own moral authority. Thus, ‘we’ are always open to challenge, and the only challenges that can count are contained within the ‘infinite’ activity of giving and asking for reasons. Beyond this internal cycle, we extend our private self into the social domain where questions of freedom are raised: As a set of some of the deepest and more thorough reflections of what it could mean for us to be free both individually and collectively under the inescapable conditions of human plurality; and as an ongoing suspicion about all those views that neglect these conditions, whether they be philosophical or otherwise – this is and remains the true legacy of idealism (Pinkard, 2002, p. 367). Before the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Pinkard (2002) argues, a revolution was clearly brewing – obviously not a political revolution since, with the distributed nature of ‘German’ authority, there was no discriminable source against which a rebellion might be focussed. There was however, a large British settlement in Königsberg (Kant’s home town), providing the impetus by which Scottish Enlightenment thought gradually mixed with German thought to yield a revolution in thinking about the ‘self’. Out of that mixture came the next lightning bolt, which in one blow effectively demolished the entire grand metaphysical system supposedly holding the whole ‘German’ scheme in place. Overthrowing the old metaphysics, it inserted a new idea into the vocabulary in terms of which modern Germans and Europeans spoke about their lives: self determination. After Kant, nothing would be the same again (Pinkard, 2002, p. 15).

38

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

The eighteenth century had seen the development of different and incompatible streams of metaphysical thought. Rousseau had promoted a concept of the ‘law within’ – an internal morality for all persons as free and equal beings. On the other hand, Newton’s scientific concept of the deterministic universe had no need for God, freedom and immortality. Kant wanted to reconcile these conflicting claims since they were not only in conflict with each other; they forced a binary choice between either universal physical laws or universal moral laws. The ‘price’ of that reconciliation was that laws of nature were given a universal and necessary but empirical and ‘merely phenomenal’ significance, while the sphere of freedom was grounded explicitly in a metaphysical and not theoretically knowable domain, one revealed only by ‘pure practical reason’. Knowledge had ‘made room for faith’, albeit a strictly moral faith that did not rest on supernatural evidence or theological arguments” (Ameriks, 2000, p. 5). Kant acknowledged the work of Voltaire and Rousseau in according unique value and dignity to the human form because of its capacity for rational thought and moral action. However, he wanted to downplay any spiritual or religious aspect of human nature as the basis for ethical responsibility. Although Kant remained a practising Christian, his effort was “radically anthropocentric” (Taylor, 1992, p. 366) in locating the source of benevolence in the rational nature of man. The cornerstone of Kant's transcendental philosophy is his Critique of Pure Reason (1934) which reconciles science and religion in a world of two levels: that of noumena – those objects conceived by reason although not perceived by the senses; and that of phenomena – things as they appear to the senses and are accessible to material study. Things appear to us, not as they are in themselves, but as we experience them – ordered through the mind's concepts of time and space. Through these ‘filters’, we shape the impressions coming from the unknowable, transcendental reality. Kant maintained that God, freedom, and human immortality are noumenal realities: understood through moral faith rather than through scientific knowledge. According to Kant, science is valid, but it has to do only with phenomena and so a rational proof of God’s existence (or any noumenal reality) was not possible. Knowledge of ultimate reality comes through practical reason, particularly through the a priori moral law in us. In his ongoing quest for reconciliation, Kant understood the appreciation of natural beauty as signalling a harmony between nature and freedom, although he still reserved a transcendental ground for both freedom and nature (Ameriks, 2000, p. 6). This was explored in his third critique (on the power of judgment), which, combined with work of Goethe and Herder, stimulated the growth of aesthetics, and provided a strong relationship between philosophy and artistic endeavour – a relationship developed by philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who could thence explore philosophy as emanating from aesthetic insight rather than from rigorous science. The aesthetic turn carried through into German poetry too, as Goethe and Schiller underlined Kantian ethics in promoting the moral and religious worth of the individual.

39

CHAPTER 3

Being the first to reconcile the conflicting empirical and rationalistic elements of prevailing philosophy, Kant is generally considered to have provided the conceptual framework for German Idealism, and so became a target for Nietzsche and other ‘post-Kantian’ critics of Enlightenment thought. Before looking more closely at a Nietzschean critique of the transcendental basis for Kantian morality though, it is useful to look at a few other figures that followed Kant and influenced the uptake of idealism in Germany. In that uptake, the ‘ideal’ world became a clear focus for Nietzsche’s tirade against cultural and social nihilism and his critique of the decadent life. Fichte argued that neither realism nor idealism alone yields any theoretical understanding of reality. Any transcendental domain was dismissed as unknowable and as meaningless. No knowledge could be its own foundation and proof. Every knowledge, he argued, presupposes something still higher as its foundation – leading to an infinite nihilistic regression. Instead, he proposed a closer link between the natural world and the revelation of pure practical reason – a commitment based on faith – a ‘voluntary acquiescence’ to his own moral conscience. Fichte’s ‘faith’ did not carry the certainty usually associated with ‘knowledge’, but involved a voluntary “decision of the will to recognise the validity of knowledge.” (Fichte, 1987, p. 71). The ‘will’ for Fichte, involved drives, urges and inclinations which prompt thought as well as action. These drives impose a certain way of thinking upon us only if we don’t see the compulsion. Awareness (as man’s ‘vocation’) could override such compulsion so that we might, in keeping with our drives, shape our own way of thinking and create our own lives. Although Fichte’s sentiments have been accused of sounding “somewhat innocent” today (Preuss in Fichte, 1987, p. xii), his grounding of knowledge inside faith and the resulting removal of moral certainty from the realm of rational argument bears remarkable similarity to Nietzsche’s critique of Kantian reason during the following century: All my conviction is only faith … the source of my conviction is higher than all disputation…Every supposed truth, which is to be produced by mere thinking without having its roots in faith, will surely be false…” (Fichte, 1987, p. 72). Often coupled with Fichte in seeking a religious basis for the origin and destiny of humans, Schelling shifted philosophical focus a number of times through his career (Hausheer, 1999). As a “philosopher of Romanticism” (Roberts, 1988, p. 144), his early focus on art and myth predated both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in their concern for the artist as creator. Bowie (2001) argues that Schelling's continuing importance relates mainly to three aspects of his work. The first is his philosophy of nature that goes beyond empirical science; the second is his antiCartesian account of subjectivity; and the third is his later critique of Hegel – all three aspects of significance to Nietzsche’s work. Hegel is known as a systematic thinker, having constructed a comprehensive system of thought about the world under the banner of ‘absolute idealism’. Like Kant, his focus was on the fundamental unity underlying all experience – absolute consciousness. Hegel held that reality must be rational, so that its ultimate

40

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

structure must be thinkable under a common concept of reason. Hegel's encyclopaedic system is divided into the science of Logic, the philosophy of Nature, and the philosophy of Spirit, a system which, he claimed, represented an historical culmination of all previous philosophical thought (Kemerling, 2001). Although usually characterised as a German idealist and a follower of Kant in his reliance on rationalism rather than revelation, Hegel can be interpreted as having radically rejected Kantianism. Hegel’s ‘absolute idealism’ and its dialectical evolution is about ultimate reality, but his ‘absolute’ is within space and time rather than in some noumenal world. Young (2003) suggests that Hegel’s joining with Fichte, Schelling and others in calling himself an idealist is a tribute to the mana of Kant, who cast such a long shadow that everyone, in the age of socalled ‘German idealism’, had at least to appear to be some sort of idealist. “Rather than ‘absolute idealism’, ‘absolute realism’ would be a less misleading label” (Young, 2003, p. 58). Tanner (1994) highlights the way in which Nietzsche’s constructed ‘opposition’ between the Apollonian and the Dionysian is immensely more fruitful than anything that could be produced by either of the opponents going it alone. Such opposition, Tanner notes, is “characteristic of nineteenth century German philosophy, its leading exponent being Hegel, a philosopher to whom Nietzsche was in general strongly antagonistic throughout his life” (p. 9). Although Tanner suggests that Nietzsche does not need any of the dialectical apparatus that Hegel encumbers himself with, Nietzsche’s Übermensch can be construed, at least in part, as a form of binary ‘overcoming’ of a worthy opponent. (This point is examined in further detail in chapter nine where Nietzsche’s Übermensch is posited as a metaphor for education.) In this respect, it could be argued that Nietzsche did not progress beyond the Hegelian dialectic. While Hegel had employed a deductive, dialectical method to reveal the absolute under all reality, Schleiermacher worked in the phenomenal world, relying on feeling rather than reason to achieve a unity. He sought to uncover the various purposes of the perceived world, and use them to achieve a totality representing the absolute divine purpose of the universe. The result was a religious consciousness which took him into the field of theology. In contrast, Herbart worked with Kant’s metaphysics, seeking to eliminate any ‘unknowable reality’, through the deduction of a divine, creative intelligence. From judgments of the soul, he promoted the ideal of an educated society as a working out of his fundamental ethical ideas. He thus became not only a reformer of psychology, but of pedagogy as well (“German Idealism”, 2001). The last representative of German Idealism to be mentioned here is Schopenhauer, although in his regard for the aesthetic response to life, he may also be characterised as Romanticist. For him, the recognisable world is mere phenomena (‘idea’); its underlying essence not Kant’s ‘thing in itself’, but a universal will – a blind striving force with no ethical content at all. Life is therefore aimless in terms of progress, resulting in a deep pessimism. Resigning oneself to such realisation is, for Schopenhauer, a mechanism to quieten the will, in line with a Buddhist deconstruction of individual worth and the belief that salvation lies in self denial (Janaway, 1994). Schopenhauer was bitter in his hatred

41

CHAPTER 3

of Christianity, although like Nietzsche to follow, he had considerable regard for the devoutness of Christ. Because of the strong links among Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, closer examination of Schopenhauer’s key themes is also warranted, but will be left until after Kant’s ideas are further explored later in this chapter. German Idealism and its broader counterpart in the Enlightenment left a strong seedbed for later philosophers – not only for the disciples, but also for those who would reject many of the premises of their predecessors. Nietzsche’s philosophical inheritance was not limited to a variable mix of rationality and religion. The rise of a revolutionary spirit in 19th Century Europe emerged in the arts in a period of Romanticism as a form of revolt against the restraints and formalism of the earlier classical period. Music had become publicly accessible after emerging from its ecclesiastical roots (and its later exclusive royal patronage), to the point where the church was no longer the primary patron of music. During the period, music focussed on the “evocation of emotion as its primary function” (Wold & Cykler, 1985, p. 204). In the school of Goethe and Schiller, poetry became a vehicle for the metaphysical or religious view of life. A different style of writing emerged from the town of Jena27 in the works of Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel and Schleiermacher. Through a ‘barrage’ of philosophic poems, revolutionary novels, essays, dialogues, extensive critical notebooks, literary journals and writings that purposely fit no standard genre, they developed what became known as Early Romanticism: “a philosophy that made a point of emphasising, often in more poetic than traditional philosophical style, the limits of philosophic systems as such and of rationality in general” (Ameriks, 2000, p. 11). Romanticism emphasised poetic expression over methodical constructions such as ‘laws of nature’ and an innate faculty of reason. The Romantic view of science was, to a considerable extent, an active revolt against the rationalism of the epoch that preceded it. Romanticism advocated a holistic view of life and the cosmos rather than allowing for dichotomies between body and soul, or between subject and object (Distante, 2000). Kant’s unwitting support for Romantic thought lay in the fact that his metaphysics left open the possibility for important truths beyond theoretical knowledge (Ameriks, 2000, p. 12), contrasting sharply with the absolute claims of what was to develop under Hegel and his followers. The flourishing of Romanticism coincided with Nietzsche’s philosophical arrival, paving the way for his break with tradition not only in terms of his thoroughgoing critique of idealism and Enlightenment reason, but also in terms of his disregard for institutional academic traditions.

27

42

The University of Jena, under Goethe’s direction as minister of culture and higher education, became a major centre of Romanticist philosophy and science. The university was linked with philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Fries; and with famous German author Friedrich Schiller. Among the students were Herbart, Wolff, Schumann, Frege and Novalis, while Schopenhauer and Marx were both to receive doctorates there. The University of Jena nurtured the development of the revolutionary student society (Burschenschaft) that demanded freedom of speech, open participation in political life, and unity for the German nation (http://www.burschenschaft.de/portrait/portrait_englisch.htm).

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

KANTIAN METAPHYSICS

Kant attributed a debt of gratitude to David Hume28 for having “commenced the assault on the claims of pure reason” (Kant, 1996, p. 68). Hume’s distinction between fact and value rendered the move from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ as inconceivable and erroneous. Thus it was not possible to reason from sets of facts to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, unless of course one is referring to the “prudential ‘ought’” (Hanfling, 1972, p. 19) – an imperative based on an empirical wisdom of self-interest, driven by “desires and inclinations” (Kant, 1988, p. 86). Kant’s ethical ideas are a logical outcome of his belief in the fundamental freedom of the individual – “a morally autonomous unit whose obligations were self-imposed and owed nothing to the external authority of a religious creed or to the deterministic pressure of a material environment” (Hampson 1968, p. 198). This freedom did not imply the lawlessness of anarchy, but rather, the freedom of self-government, and the freedom to obey consciously the laws of the universe as revealed by reason. Society’s laws were to reflect the reasoned will of all members of society, presumably increasing the likelihood of conformity to such laws. Kant, like Rousseau, believed all men were to be treated as equal, offering philosophical grounds for social and political equality, and providing the basis for the unique moral value of the individual (Hanfling, 1972, p. 10). For Kant, morality consists in the reference of all action to a reasoned legislation. He holds that as all rational beings come under the law, they deserve respect as ends in themselves: Each of them must treat itself and all others never merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves. Hence results a systematic union of rational beings by common objective laws, i.e., a kingdom which may be called a kingdom of ends, since what these laws have in view is just the relation of these beings to one another as ends and means. It is certainly only an ideal” (Kant, 1988, p. 62). Kant’s moral reasoning had relied upon a structure of concepts and categories by means of which an active reason imposes order on the world29. Kantian principles of practical reason were not natural objects capable of discovery, so much as the creation of individual reason and desire. Kant’s conception of law was therefore inseparable from his belief in the activity, dignity and worth of rational individuals who created it (R. Peters, 1966). Underpinning Kant’s bid to free human nature from external determination is his notion of the will. The concept is used in various ways by philosophers, but for Kant it was always something belonging to rational beings: “a faculty either to 28

29

Kant had acknowledged some four years earlier in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Hume’s ideas had interrupted his ‘dogmatic slumber’ to give his investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction. In this respect, Nietzsche can be considered almost Kantian, although Nietzsche is not limited to reason in imposing order on the world. the total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos – [in its] lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and what ever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms (GS §109).

43

CHAPTER 3

produce objects corresponding to ideas, or to determine ourselves to the effecting of such objects (whether the power is sufficient or not)” (Kant, 1996, p. 25). The ‘will’ is seen as a “rational faculty” (Hanfling, 1972, pp. 26-27) and identified with “practical reason” (Paton, 1963, p. 82). Given the necessary and intentional nature of reason in this ethical system, it was logical to search for some kind of universal formula. Of course, it was always possible to formulate an end based on a presupposed condition – if you want A, then do B – a possibility that Kant depicted as a ‘hypothetical imperative’. His search in the moral domain however was for something less conditional, resulting in his (debatably) universal notion of the ‘categorical imperative’ – the fundamental moral principle or law to guide all moral action, expressed typically as the prescription: “Act according to a maxim which can at the same time make itself a universal law.” (Kant, 1988, p. 66). Thus to be considered moral, an action had to be guided by thinking which could, under the same conditions, apply universally to all rational beings; with self-interest subject to an overarching principle that could be prescribed as a universal law. For Kant, this universal law was the ‘categorical imperative’. Kant’s prescription for every person to be treated as an end in itself and not as a means to advance the interests of others implies that individuals must be granted autonomy both to formulate what is in their best interests and to pursue their interests and chosen activities free from unwarranted constraint. This does not mean free from all constraint, however, since his prescription for a universal moral ground required that self-interest be subject to a consideration for others as ends in themselves, so that private reason was always (to an undetermined extent) tempered by social considerations. For Kant, the supreme good relies on a will which is self ruled or autonomous – doing the right thing because it is the right thing, determined by reason and not by inclination or instinct, and free from any kind of inducement or external purpose, such as happiness, achievement, passion, external rules or religion. The categorical imperative introduced the notion of duty as a necessary component of morality. Kant argued that reason is able to fulfil a purpose determined by reason alone, overcoming inclination and desire – not as a means to a further end, but as a good in itself (Hanfling, 1972, pp. 34-35). In this, Kant parted company with Hume, who rejected the idea of reason as an original principle with a prerogative above others. Hume considered thought to be subordinate to sense and experience: “All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense and experience” (Hume, 1927, p. 16). Hume’s elevation of experience over reason was rejected by Kant as heteronomy of the will, and not part of a system of morality. The problem of heteronomy for Kant was that all popular systems of morality of his day located the essence of morality in factors which lay outside morality, in empirical factors (Hanfling, 1972), whereas Kant believed that genuine foundations must be a priori – thus duty for its own sake: In order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law, but it must also be done for the sake of the law,

44

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

otherwise that conformity is only very contingent and uncertain; since a principle which is not moral, although it may now and then produce actions confirmable to the law, will also often produce actions which contradict it (Kant, 1988, p. 12). Heteronomy is easy to distinguish when some form of compulsion is operating such as political interference or physical necessity. Although Kant was, to some extent, trying to validate existing and commonly accepted principles, he was not prepared to accept a morality subject to mere tastes or preference. In Kant’s system of rational morality, actions arising from mere taste or whim are rejected as “inevitably only heteronomy” (Kant, 1988, p. 74), since these actions are not governed by the intentional element of reason; nor are they applicable universally. Building on the inseparable notions of freedom and autonomy, Kant (1960) formulated what might be taken as his educational philosophy. In a small volume entitled simply Education, he expounds on a number of themes still recognisable in educational dialogue today. For example, he talks of a blend between ‘nurture’, ‘discipline’, ‘teaching’ and ‘culture’ (p. 1). His hope for the future lies in the continuous ‘improvement’ of ‘human nature’ through education. He speaks out against ‘mechanical’ teaching, advocating instead schools “guided by experiments” (p. 22) – ‘experiments’ which today we might call ‘research’. He differentiates between ‘practical’ (moral) training and ‘physical’ sciences. He advocates Socratic method, suggesting teachers “try to draw out [students’] own ideas, founded on reason” (p. 81), rather than introduce such ideas into their minds. He argues that a child must from earliest childhood be allowed “perfect liberty in every respect (except on those occasions when he might hurt himself)” (p. 28). In short, Kant’s educative direction is a prescription for internalising the moral law. Everything in education depends upon establishing correct principles, and leading children to understand and accept them. They must learn to substitute abhorrence for what is revolting and absurd, for hatred; the fear of their own conscience, for the fear of man and divine punishment; self-respect and inward dignity, for the opinions of men; the inner value of actions, for words and mere impulses; understanding, for feeling; and joyousness and piety with good humour, for a morose, timid and gloomy devotion (Kant, 1960, p. 109). In explaining his ‘system’ of morality, Kant (1988) argues that reason is the ‘supreme cause’ and therefore not justifiable or explainable on prior grounds. Thus, it cannot find a supreme motive in the empirical world. Nor, on the other hand, may it operate solely in its own empty space of transcendental concepts – and this is where Kant acknowledges the limits of reason. Human reason, he says, cannot enable us to conceive the absolute necessity of an unconditional practical law, and yet we “comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason” (Kant, 1988, p. 97). In Kant’s admission about the limits of human reason lies a fundamental conceptual problem with the moral domain. Hanfling (1972) points out that if explanations or motivations were forthcoming (for what is declared in his moral

45

CHAPTER 3

law to be incomprehensible), then autonomy has no place. Autonomous action, as a cornerstone of Kant’s morality, precludes our searching in the sensible world for a motive for doing what is morally right. Additionally, we may not allow our reason to stray into the transcendental world which lies beyond its capacities. Although Hanfling is clearly respectful of the reasoned edifice that Kant constructed, he uses this stalemate in Kant’s position to warn that reason must not “commit the absurdity of trying to know the unknowable” (1972, p. 60). Connolly (2000) suggests that Kant’s attempt to anchor the supersensible in a familiar concept of reason, avoids an untenable situation in which everyone has his own private, inner revelation, and in which no communication about truth is possible. However, the operation of Kant’s morality is still very much a private business, necessarily autonomous and reliant upon individual interpretation of what a sense of duty might command. Admittedly, Kant acknowledges the difference between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ use of one’s reason, defining the former as “the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public” (1990, p. 85), and the latter as “that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him” (ibid.). However, his differentiation here applies more to communicative action rather than the kind of logic internal to his notion of moral duty. Following one’s duty requires an inner consultation and thus a private rationality. Foucault notes the political implications of this distinction: The question, in any event, is that of knowing how the use of reason can take the public form that it requires, how the audacity to know can be exercised in broad daylight, while individuals are obeying as scrupulously as possible (Foucault, 1984a, p. 37). Kant’s solution was a “contract of rational despotism with free reason” (Foucault, ibid.) – a proposal to Frederick II that the best guarantee of obedience would be the public and free use of autonomous reason, provided always that the will of authority was in conformity with universal reason. Although an excellent political move in terms of democratising authority, and strongly reminiscent of Rousseau’s ‘General Will’, Kant’s proposal does not solve the philosophical conflict between a public display of reason and a private inner sense of duty. We are left then with the essence of Kantian morality as necessarily incomprehensible, in that it is a self-contained ‘system’ that can’t be explained by empirical means, with its ‘truth’ dependent on an individual and private rationality, and its ultimate driver in an unknowable realm. And such inaccessible incomprehensibility begets both the notion of ‘duty’ and the ‘categorical imperative’ that governs all moral thought and action! NIETZSCHE’S CRITIQUE OF KANT

In spite of the deductive logic underpinning Kant’s categorical imperative and his notion of duty, his position still requires a commitment to the universal good – a secularisation of the ultimate and unknowable realm outside of human perception and sensation. From this universal realm, Kant derived his ethical concern for autonomy and his respect for persons as ‘ends in themselves’. Reliance on an

46

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

unknowable realm as the source of ethical commitment requires a leap of faith beyond empirical justification, in much the same manner as a religious faith in God must transcend the perceived world (Connolly, 2000). The resulting deification of universal reason underpins much of Nietzsche’s criticism of Kant, in particular Kant’s quest to demonstrate the existence of a higher morality. Nietzsche’s famous declaration that God is dead (GS §108) lays siege to Kantian reason as the suffused image of God – a ‘tremendous, gruesome shadow’ that may be projected for thousands of years, ‘a spectre to overcome’ as man is ‘reintegrated into nature’: When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to ‘naturalise’ humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature? (GS §109). From the perspective that God is dead, there is no basis for shadows to persist. Nietzsche argues that when one gives up Christian belief, one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality, since it is true only if God is true. Any remnants of intuition about good and evil are then merely a legacy of Christian morality, whether conscious or not. Tanner’s introduction to Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols highlights the link between the Christian God and Kant’s foundation of morality. Tanner emphasises the holistic nature of Christian belief and sympathises with Nietzsche over the illegitimacy of selective appropriation of its component parts: we still derive our conception of human nature from seeing ourselves as creatures, obliged to obey the dictates of our Creator. ... but at the same time we realise that something is amiss, so we tinker around in an ad hoc sort of way, holding on to such concepts as ‘rights’ and ‘equality’, jettisoning or tacitly ignoring others that we find inconvenient. The result, in Nietzsche’s view, is a moral and spiritual vulgarity so depressing that he has to stage a one-man, non-stop demonstration of exaltation (Tanner, 1990, p. 13). In a series of short propositions, Nietzsche (TI) dismantles the Kantian separation of the ‘real’ from the ‘apparent’ world. He observes that any reality other than the empirical world is absolutely undemonstrable, and thus a “moraloptical illusion” (TI, ‘Reason’ in Philosophy §6). Talk of another ‘better’ or ‘higher’ realm is for Nietzsche merely a revenge on life, an expression of décadence and a symptom of declining life. Belief in a higher realm is a feature common to both Christianity and to Kantian philosophy, leading to Nietzsche’s denigration of Kant as a cunning Christian. In contrast, Nietzsche had a life-long admiration for the figure of the artist who could affirm (rather than deny) reality and enhance it through a particular representation. The artist’s focus on ‘appearance’ was not an inadequate signifier of some higher unattainable realm, but an engagement with reality as it presents: ‘Appearance’ here signifies reality once more, only selected, strengthened, corrected ... The tragic artist is not a pessimist – it is precisely he who affirms all that is questionable and terrible in existence, he is Dionysian (TI, ‘Reason’ in Philosophy §6).

47

CHAPTER 3

Not content with an attack on the basis of Kant’s logic, Nietzsche goes on to attack the genealogy of Kantian thought. In six paragraphs, he traces the history of Western thought from Plato through to a nihilistic end of modernity, exposing Kant’s ‘Real World’ as a myth (TI, How the ‘Real World’ at last became a myth). The ‘real world’ signified here is, of course, Kant’s noumena, the necessarily elusive nature of which conceals the essence of rational morality. The categorical imperative has little value for Nietzsche, not only because of its inadequate referent, but also because he sees the claim that ‘everyone must judge as I do’ as merely an egotistical imposition of one’s own will: For it is selfish to experience one’s own judgment as a universal law; and this selfishness is blind, petty, and frugal because it betrays that you have not yet discovered yourself nor created for yourself an ideal of your own, your very own – for that could never be somebody else’s and much less that of all, all! (GS §335). His objection to a universal application here stems, paradoxically, from a Kantian idea that our opinions about ‘good’ and ‘noble’ and ‘great’ can never be proved true by our actions, simply because of the degree of separation between rational thought and the sensory world. In the binary differentiation between idealism and materialism, the essence of every action is unknowable. While Nietzsche accepts that our opinions and tables of values act as powerful levers in governing our actions, he claims that, “in any particular case the law of their mechanism is indemonstrable” (GS §335). This is a clear call for ethical direction and self-creation to emanate from the physically discoverable – ‘the lawful and necessary in the world’, and the quality of honesty which provides the strength of character to face reality without the hidden dimension. The call to physics as justification for the world was a characteristic of Nietzsche’s ‘positivist’ period30 during which Nietzsche sought cultural renewal through science (Owen, 1995). Nietzsche’s atheism and his account of ‘God’s murder’ (GS §125) was a rejection of a higher judgmental authority that served to “redirect people’s attention to their inherent freedom, the presently-existing world, and away from all escapist, painrelieving, heavenly otherworlds” (Wicks, 2004). The net effect of such a critique is that if the ‘real world’ (i.e., the higher realm, the noumena or the ‘thing-in-itself’) is unattainable, then it cannot be known, and so therefore we have no duty towards it. The ‘real world’ thus becomes useless as an idea. But as we abolish the ‘real’ world, we also abolish its binary derivative – the ‘apparent’ world, since there is nothing hidden to be revealed. With the ‘thingin-itself’ undemonstrable, Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ and sense of moral duty is then – at best – misguided and lacking a philosopher’s critical reflection: The “categorical imperative” crept stealthily into his heart and led him astray – back to “God”, “soul”, “freedom,” and “immortality,” like a fox who loses his way and goes astray back into his cage. Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage! (GS §335). 30

The period from his writing of Human, All Too Human in 1878 to the first four books of The Gay Science in 1882 (Wicks, 2004)

48

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

It would be wrong to suggest, though, that Kant’s educational philosophy had nothing to offer Nietzsche. A number of Kantian themes resonate in Nietzsche’s writing: for example, the notion of man as becoming rather than being: Man can only become man through education (Kant, 1960, p. 6); the importance of the teacher as model and mentor: Were some being of higher nature than man to undertake our education, we should then be able to see what man might become (ibid., p. 6); an element of naturalism as part of destiny: … many germs lying undeveloped in man. It is for us to make these germs grow, by developing his natural gifts in their due proportion, and to see that he fulfils his destiny” (ibid., p. 9); and the significance of ‘character’ in relation to discipline: The ‘first endeavour in moral education is the formation of character …[requiring] strict adherence to rules (ibid., p. 84-85). Kant’s notion of ‘character’ required obedience31, truthfulness and sociableness – all qualities which Nietzsche admired in Schopenhauer as an educator. However, Nietzsche would distance himself from Kant’s formulation of the foundation of moral character as a binary sense of duty: on the one hand, “duties to self” – including temperance and dignity; and, on the other hand, “duties to others” – including reverence and respect for the rights of others (Kant, 1960, pp. 101-102). Man’s duty to improve himself, says Kant, means he must ‘bring the moral law to bear upon himself’, since he is not by nature a moral being. He only ‘becomes a moral being’ when his reason has “developed ideas of duty and law” (ibid., p. 108). His ‘natural inclination’ is to vice, achieving moral goodness only by means of ‘virtue’ – that is to say, by ‘self-restraint’. In stark contrast, Nietzsche’s morality requires an integrity that comes not from compliance with an externally imposed system of values, nor from being constrained within a system of rationality, but from interrogating the whole basis of morality – a “revaluation of all values” (AC §13)32. Although his later works (GM; BGE; AC; TI) are clearly focussed on the nature of morality, Nietzsche added a preface entitled Attempt at a Self Criticism to his very first book some fourteen years after its original writing, to revise what the book was ‘really’ about. Rather than his earlier claim that, “Art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life” (BT: Preface to Richard Wagner), he now suggested that morality had been his focus all along: 31

For Kant, obedience could be either (a) absolute and compulsory; or (b) voluntary, arising out of trust and confidence. Although morality and a sense of duty requires the latter, Kant acknowledged that the former may be necessary to: prepare the child for the fulfilment of laws that he will have to obey later, as a citizen, even though he may not like them (1960, p. 90).

32

In the translator’s note, Hollingdale notes that the Antichrist was intended as the first part of a fourbook project entitled The Revaluation of all Values.

49

CHAPTER 3

It was against morality that my instinct turned with this questionable book, long ago; it was an instinct that aligned itself with life and that discovered for itself a fundamentally opposite doctrine and valuation of life – purely artistic and anti-Christian. … I called it Dionysian (BT: Attempt at a Self-Criticism). Kant’s construction of morality then can be seen in Nietzschean terms as disguised Platonism or as selective Christianity, operating out of a sense of duty that was by Kant’s own admission ‘incomprehensible’, and the application of a categorical imperative based on a notion of universal reason that governs all rational beings – god and man alike. To make matters worse, Nietzsche suggests, this construction of a categorical imperative is merely an egocentric projection of Kant’s own philosophical belief (GS §335). Thus Kant’s construction of morality is questionable at least, although perhaps not sufficient to warrant Nietzsche’s assessment of him as “the most deformed intellectual cripple there has ever been” (TI, What the Germans Lack §7). Although Nietzsche does not offer an explicit normative theory of ethics in the way Kant does, he does see values as an important influence on a person’s actions, or he would not be concerned to undertake a revaluation of values. However, as Leiter points out, “the causal efficacy of values is always circumscribed by the natural facts that make a person who he or she is” (1997, p. 262). It is this point that marks the separation between Kant and Nietzsche. No longer is the rational capacity or the transcendental world the source of all moral value. Nietzsche calls instead for a new ethical direction: Let us therefore limit ourselves to the purification of our opinions and valuations and to the creation of our own new tables of what is good, and let us stop brooding about the “moral value of our actions”! …We, however, want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves (GS §335). Schopenhauer’s educational impact on Nietzsche has already been explicated earlier, so will not be reproduced here. However, it is important to note that the early influences upon Schopenhauer’s philosophy were Kantian. These are clear in his writing, with frequent references to Kant, especially the preservation of the Kantian notion of ‘thing-in-itself’ (as ‘Will’). Schopenhauer is an idealist, in that, for him, material objects would not exist without a subject, without a mind to think them (Janaway, 1994). Schopenhauer’s doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1974) theorises the principles governing ordinary experience and reasoning. He follows Kant in positing objects in the world as knowable only in relation to space and time. A second class of objects is his idea of concepts – our ways of representing experiences of things in the material world. His third class of objects is made up of space and time – as theoretical constructs; while his fourth class is our experience of the self. To each of these classes of object, he assigns a different way of knowing: The subjective correlative to the first class of representations is the understanding, that to the second the faculty of reason, and that to the third

50

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

pure sensibility, so is the subjective correlative to this fourth class found to be the inner sense, or generally self-consciousness (Schopenhauer, 1974, p. 212). Of particular interest in relation to Kant is his fourth class and the way in which the subject is revealed. Here he parts company with Kant in arguing that the subject is available to human experience, revealed as the will. Schopenhauer talks of an ‘inner knowledge’, in which: All knowledge presupposes a known and a knower. Thus within us the known as such is not the knower but the willer, the subject of willing, the will…. To this extent the subject of willing would therefore be for us an object. When we are introspective, we always find ourselves as the willer” (Schopenhauer, 1974, p. 211). Schopenhauer’s idea of the will as a blind, striving force is anything but a rational basis for morality, and provides a vehicle for understanding something of Nietzsche’s appeal to Dionysian revelry and the orgiastic frenzy which he longs for. Comparing Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s formulations of the will helps to understand some of the inherent tension in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Much of Nietzsche’s writing promoted a revelry in the horror of existence and the strength of character that entailed; while at the same time he attempted to reconcile its conflicting aspects. While no exact match is proposed here, Schopenhaurean will might be seen as emerging through Dionysian expression, while Kantian reason might be represented in terms of the Apollonian – a dualism that occupied Nietzsche intensely and provided the ground for his notion of Übermensch as some sort of reconciliation in the face of challenge and adversity. In expressing opinions about Hegel, Schopenhauer provided a model of linguistic freedom for Nietzsche. Not only was his aphoristic style continued into Nietzsche’s era, the level of invective was also infectious. Schopenhauer had a lifelong hatred for Hegel – some might say ‘envy of his public acclaim’ – which is evident in Nietzsche as well. Schopenhauer (1974) lambasts Hegel as “a charlatan” (p. 168), “a dull ignorant philosophaster, [and] scribbler of nonsense” (p. 61), and an “ignoramus” (p. 120); describing Hegel’s philosophy as “pseudophilosophy” (p. 16), “empty, hollow, and even nauseous verbiage” (p. 60), and “Hegelian twaddle” (p. 182). This attitude is mirrored in some choice phrases in Nietzsche’s writing, where he recalls his earlier Birth of Tragedy as “offensively Hegelian” (EH, The Birth of Tragedy §1); where he insults Hegel as an “unconscious counterfeiter” of knowledge (EH, The Case of Wagner §3); where he portrays Hegel’s theory as the “abstrusest of sciences and altogether a piece of the highest moral boredom” (DB III §193); and where he refers to Hegel’s systematic philosophy: “I mistrust all systematisers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity” (TI, Maxims and Arrows §26). This is not to suggest that Nietzsche’s opinion of Hegel was mere imitation, but Schopenhauer’s style of language was a definite break with the careful logic of his idealist predecessors, and would have had some effect on the young Nietzsche.

51

CHAPTER 3

Schopenhauer had appealed to Nietzsche33 during his formative years through his elevation of the status of embodied presence, his notion of the will as a metaphysical force, and his uptake of Eastern mysticism as an alternative to reason. In rejecting universal and transcendental ideals, Nietzsche posited will to power (rather than rational essence) as the driver for humanity; he promoted embodied, worldly presence (the real) rather than an idea(l) of heavenly salvation or deified truth; and espoused individual character – his own, possibly – over equality or social conformity. Nietzsche’s view of morality is intertwined with his view of ressentiment mentality, a theme explored in depth in his On the Genealogy of Morals (GM). Nietzsche ridiculed the Christian technology of subservience and self-denial, although he held a deep respect for Christ himself, lauding him as a ‘free spirit’ who sees his innermost being as ‘life’, ‘truth’ and ‘light’ while at the same time standing outside of all religion (AC §32). Nietzsche refused any morality that relied on an afterlife or a ‘better world’ for salvation (including Hegel’s impending ‘absolute’), believing instead that the life to be celebrated is of this world: I have discovered the arrogant theologian-instinct wherever anyone today feels himself to be an ‘idealist’ – wherever anyone assumes, by virtue of a higher origin, a right to cast strange and superior looks at actuality (AC §8). What Nietzsche held against Kant (and idealism generally) is the reliance upon a ‘higher origin’ that militates against the striving for excellence in this life, a striving in which Nietzsche would advocate “concern with the self, suffering, a certain stoic indifference, a sense of hierarchy and difference” (Leiter, 1997, p. 268). As a critique of idealist thought, Nietzsche’s Übermensch functions as a personification of worldly freedom, – a (debatably) human form that projects Nietzsche’s valuation of the worldly over the transcendent, his espousal of individual overcoming over social obligation, and his promotion of health and power over sickness and duty. The role of culture and education was to prepare the way for Übermenschlich development, with the power of humanity manifest in its highest specimens. Thus, Nietzsche’s Übermensch can be seen as an antidote to German idealism. Of course, it might be argued that Übermensch was just another idealist notion in that it does not describe an actual being. However, the concept entails the primacy of worldly reality, grounded in the social rather than the ideal world, and not imbued with and reliant upon rational morality. Thus, it points towards something beyond Kant as an ethical basis.

33

Nietzsche later distanced himself from Schopenhauer’s nihilistic devaluation of life. According to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer had interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, as phenomena consequent upon the ‘denial’ of the will – a move Nietzsche labelled as: the greatest piece of psychological false-coinage in history, Christianity alone excepted (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely Man §21).

52

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND GERMAN IDEALISM

The next chapter now expands on the interpretation of Nietzsche’s ideas, beginning with an exploration of recent debate within educational philosophy about the possible relationship between Nietzsche and education.

53

CHAPTER 4

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

THE RECEPTION OF NIETZSCHE

There have been various receptions of Nietzsche in Western thought. In contrast to the fifty-year old reading by Georg Lukács emerging from a rising European socialism, Johnson (1996) highlights a number of ‘redemptive’ interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought, including: the early feminist embrace of Nietzsche’s critique of a rationality as a revolt against bourgeois domesticity; contemporary feminist echoes of Nietzsche’s struggle against a classical liberal conception of the subject; and Warren’s (1988) depiction of ‘gentle’ postmodern Nietzsche as opposed to the ‘bloody’ Nietzsche engaged in exploitation and subjection of otherness. Also included as a redemptive strategy in Johnson’s overview are Nehamas’s (1985) aesthetic reading of life as literature in which free spirits encounter the world as a text in relation to which they are paradoxically positioned as both reader/interpreter and author/creator; Foucault’s appeal to the aesthetic in repudiating the normalising impositions of received morality; and Rorty’s attempt to reclaim Nietzsche for the purposes of social cooperation in a utopia of pluralistic modernity. Most of these redemptive approaches, she argues, have strongly pluralistic motivations and tend to support one form or another of postmodern commitment to the expression of difference. With no authentic Nietzsche and no dogmatic certainty as to his original intent, such interpretations are not seeking disclosure of an essential truth in Nietzsche’s texts, but are concerned to harness aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy to clarify and elucidate contemporary concerns. Johnson suggests that these strategic (redemptive) readings seek to produce a Nietzsche we can live with – a recognition perhaps that “we cannot live with a Nietzsche untamed” (p. 32). The question remains then of just how much of Nietzsche’s world can be dissolved in the solution of our own contemporary issues, and whether Nietzsche’s ideas can be reasonably interpreted for such purposes. On the politics of reading Nietzsche, Coole (1998) notes an ‘insatiable appetite’ for interpretations of Nietzsche among political theorists, philosophers and cultural critics. Her paper surveys a few commentaries within political debate, but in the end, amounts to a rejection of postmodern initiatives within Nietzschean scholarship, highlighting the nihilistic end of Derridean deconstruction and the futility of trying to construct a metaphysics in a post-Kantian reality. The outcome, for Coole, is the claim, contested here, that Nietzsche is politically impotent – particularly if we are to ignore his hierarchical and aristocratic thinking.

54

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

The preface to a recent collection of essays – an international offering edited by Peters, Marshall and Smeyers (2001)34 – attributes the popularisation of Nietzsche’s ideas to readings by Bataille, Blanchot, Blondel, Klossowski, Kofman, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida in their English translations, and to the huge influence of Heidegger’s series of lectures and essays. Subsequent English interpretations have also been influential – among those noted are Kaufmann, Rorty, Magnus and Higgins, Leiter, Warren and Schacht. Focus is kept here on the ways in which Nietzsche might be considered educational, although broader reference is made to a number of these thinkers in support of educational points being made. The introduction to the same book notes the dearth of scholarship engaging with Nietzsche’s educational philosophy and writings, so the debate conducted in philosophy of education journals is significant in an exploration of this nature. The previous chapter focussed mainly on what might be called Nietzsche’s explicit educational philosophy. However, commentary on Nietzsche’s relation to education needs to draw more widely than that, paying attention not only to his other writing that might illuminate educational debate, but also to Nietzsche as a representative of his own style of educator. This last aspect also allows room for discussion of Nietzsche’s wandering prophet Zarathustra, arguably a spokesperson for Nietzsche’s later thoughts about education and self-development. The current chapter acknowledges the debate conducted spasmodically over the last decades in three philosophy of education journals – the North American Educational Theory, the British Journal of Philosophy of Education, and some recent articles in the Australasian Journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. Examination of interpretations made by various authors in the field points to a number of themes that impact on educational thought. Among these are Nietzsche’s will to power in relation to individual freedom and the liberal self, his elitism in relation to an egalitarian concern for democracy, self-overcoming as a metaphor for education, and emulation of style as a mode of education. While this list is not exhaustive, it is interesting to note the overlap with aspects seen as emanating directly from Nietzsche’s writing – in particular the relationship between the individual and the social, and the importance of the idea of selfovercoming. These and other aspects are explored in detail throughout later chapters in discussions on liberalism, on democracy and on poststructural accounts of education. Before embarking on those discussions though, it is important to survey the territory covered by some of the commentators to establish what has already been said. To this end, our attention now focuses on some published articles within the field of philosophy of education. THE JOURNAL DEBATE

Between 1980 and 1991, five papers about Nietzsche and education appeared in the Journal of Philosophy of Education, each subsequent writer referring to, arguing 34

The author of this thesis contributed a chapter, along with some unpublished work cited in the book’s introduction as the basis for the review of the Nietzschean literature in philosophy of education. That ‘unpublished work’ has formed the basis of the current thesis chapter.

55

CHAPTER 4

with, or incorporating the work of earlier contributors. One examination of the educational significance of Nietzsche’s thought appeared in the American journal Educational Theory in 1973. In terms of educational philosophy, it credits Nietzsche with having “the most systematic and the most consistent working out of the idea of radical free education in the history of educational thought” (Rosenow, 1973, p. 370). The same journal features another paper by James Hillesheim, who interpreted Nietzsche’s educational theory of self-overcoming as the path towards the creation of genius and genuine culture. It was not for another seven years that the issue of Nietzsche and education was raised again, this time in the British Journal of Philosophy of Education. Between 1980 and 1985, four papers about Nietzsche and education appeared, with each writer incorporating the work of earlier contributors, (although there was no mention of the two 1973 papers). One of the contributors, David Cooper, explored the subject in depth in his book Authenticity and Learning (1983a), which was referred to in subsequent debate. In 1986, Nietzsche’s educational philosophy again came under scrutiny in Educational Theory. Hillesheim and Rosenow were responsible for three out of a total of five more papers that appeared there over the next four years. None of the five acknowledged the work done in earlier papers in the British journal. Nietzsche appeared again in the British journal in 1991 with Aviram’s summary and analysis of the earlier articles providing a broad philosophical reconciliation of many apparently contradictory perspectives. Sassone’s (1996) article made a useful contribution to the debate about whether Nietzsche might be used to support any kind of democracy. Offering a postmodern reading of Nietzsche’s many ‘voices’, she perhaps comes closest to a poststructural reading of Nietzsche that emerges later in this volume. Some further articles on Nietzsche to appear in these journals since Sassone’s effort (Johnson, 1998; Bingham, 1998; 2001; Gregory, 2001; Tubbs, 2003) have added little new to the debate but are reviewed briefly later in this chapter. Of interest though are contributions to the British journal featuring a comparison between Anglo-American and German readings of Nietzsche and education (Rosenow, 2000), and a perspectival account of Nietzschean education in terms of lies and obedience (Ramaekers 2001). The focus of the journal articles referred to ranges from an emphasis on the teaching style and message of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, to a broad interpretation of Nietzsche’s other educational writings. What follows is a brief synopsis of each paper outlining the main points of educational significance attributed to Nietzsche’s work. At this stage, it seems important to extract and delineate the main points of the debate presented so far. Little evaluative analysis is entered into in this chapter, as the issues are broader than this kind of scan would allow. The investigative discussion is conducted throughout the following chapters. Writing some thirty years ago, Hillesheim (1973) finds in Nietzsche’s educational philosophy the notion of ‘self-surpassing’, as the means through which an organism exercises its will to power and gives form to itself. Nietzsche believed that the flourishing of Greek culture depended on the spirit of contest between man’s ‘noble’ desires and his most terrifying instincts, which one must not

56

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

suppress or attempt to escape from. In the spirit of that contest, the self-surpassing person will seek out the most awesome opponents. For Nietzsche, the contest itself is neither good nor evil, but is a means to an end, drawing its character from what it strives towards. The greatness of a culture depends not on how well it educates its masses, but on how well it educates its elite. He sees that contest serves the ends of genius and genuine culture, while attempts at bringing culture to the masses in the form of higher education is merely encouraging a mediocre majority. Given the different capacities, talents, strengths, and limitations, to accord everyone equal rights or equal treatment would be the height of injustice. Hillesheim defends Nietzsche from accusations of ruthlessness, suggesting that his militaristic passages are explainable as metaphor, and that often when Nietzsche speaks of war he is referring to the contest of ideas, thoughts, and values. Nietzsche believes that the masses are not enlightened enough to see that the advancement of society depends upon a few rare, creative individuals, and that their own welfare stems from the production of genius. The article appears to agree with Nietzsche’s elitist philosophy in relation to education, but does pose a question that students of Nietzsche’s educational philosophy must face: “What price is one willing to pay for the creation of the genius or superman?” (Hillesheim, 1973, p. 353). The fact that no answer is provided leaves any elitist position vulnerable in the face of criticism from proponents of liberal education in a democratic society. Writing in the same journal volume, Rosenow (1973) suggests that Nietzsche’s absence from the histories of educational thought may stem from the very fact that such elitist thinking does not easily blend with currently acceptable educational theories. Nevertheless, he argues that many of the problems which preoccupy Nietzsche are those of traditional educational philosophy, the only difference being Nietzsche’s radical interpretation. Nietzsche’s justification of education is not that it can reform society or one’s fellow man, but that it can reform and improve oneself. Rosenow argues that even for Rousseau and Dewey, the aim of education was not a natural and free human being but a complete acceptance of the authority of the (democratic) society. In other words, the rhetoric of individual freedom serves specific political interests. His analysis of Nietzsche’s early educational lectures concludes that academic freedom is an “ideological fiction in which the State attempts to camouflage its manipulation of the intellectuals” (1973, p. 357). The aim of social institutions and social norms is to subjugate the individual and suppress man’s will to power, since individuality is by its nature anti-social. One of Nietzsche’s objections to modern liberal democracy is the glorification of equality. Rosenow explains Nietzsche’s ideal of a synthesis between Dionysian experience and Apollonian illusion. He argues that this ideal has been distorted by the Socratic focus on intellectualism, adopted as a defence-mechanism against the power of the Dionysian experience. Nietzsche would have the Socratic principle of reason as foreign to authentic human nature. Instead, in Schopenhauer as Educator, he says that the real essence of man is not deep inside himself, but rather far above himself and able to be revealed to man by his true educators.

57

CHAPTER 4

Rosenow identifies the educational significance of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and relates many of the events to metaphors in terms of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Zarathustra’s cave is portrayed as a complete negation of Plato’s cave, the classical parable of humanistic education. The end of the story has Zarathustra sitting in the entrance to his cave surrounded by a snake, an eagle, doves and a lion who chases away the herd of confused nihilists. The narrative provides what Rosenow sees as a Nietzschean ideal: a man who has gotten over the Socratic fallacy and achieved the Dionysian experience while safeguarding at the same time the Apollonian illusion – a reconciliation seen as a desirable attribute of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The Nietzschean idea of freedom is portrayed, not as arbitrariness and of uncurbed drives, but as a progression towards man’s authentic being, resulting from a deep feeling of responsibility on man’s part. This is a freedom man can achieve only by himself, only by struggling with himself. It is not to be equated with lawlessness, but with a more positive view of freedom in which man exercises mastery over himself, and a full responsibility for his own good and bad actions. Rosenow argues that the heavy burden for such a move is loneliness and isolation from society. In fact, Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is often criticised for its elitist and anti-social nature, and for the way it isolates man and eliminates the possibility of inter-personal communication. Rosenow raises the question of whether such a philosophy can nevertheless be considered within the realm of education, and claims that as we face the crisis of nihilism, we have no choice but to turn to Nietzsche’s educational theory as “the most systematic and the most consistent working out of the idea of radical free education in the history of educational thought” (Rosenow, 1973, p. 370). With no acknowledgement of the earlier journal papers, Gordon (1980) writes in the British journal as a response to Heidegger’s lecture Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?. Heidegger (1985)35 had interpreted Zarathustra as an advocate of the proposition that all being is will to power, as the teacher of eternal return, and thus as teacher of the overman. Gordon claims, however, that Heidegger does not go far enough in his portrayal of Zarathustra as an educator, especially in terms of how Zarathustra taught that vision and how this undertaking influenced him as a teacher, since the style of the teacher is just as important as the content of the teachings. Zarathustra he says, “constantly indicated that his teachings relate to man’s entire life and not only to his thinking” (Gordon, 1980, p. 188). Gordon analyses various themes arising in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, arguing that Zarathustra abandons the human herd, and as an example of his own teachings, commits himself to the trajectory described in the three metamorphoses: the camel, as the spirit who ladens itself with burdens so that it can rejoice in its own strength; the lion, who creates freedom by rejecting historically ingrained values; and the child, who can will its own creation from innocence. Zarathustra’s derision of the preachers of virtue and the afterworld is also seen to have educational significance. First, it identifies the values and attitudes that must be abandoned to move towards the superman; second, it provides spiritual 35

58

Although the volume cited was published in 1985, the lecture “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” was delivered by Heidegger in 1953.

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

burdens for the disciples to begin their own metamorphosis; and third, it introduces his pupils to a unique style of teaching. By dancing from aphorism to aphorism, Zarathustra copes with the horror of becoming who he is, and is able to celebrate his own existence and find joy in sharing his wisdom. Gordon suggests that Zarathustra’s journeys are reflected in his educational message: that to develop a profound relationship to Being, “a person must be willing to burden himself with his personal destiny” (1980, p. 185), a willingness that can be developed by learning to live in solitude, and by finding friends who will confront him with difficult truths. He identifies three distinguishing features that render Zarathustra’s approach to education worth remembering: first, the pupil’s existential situation is the starting point for the teacher of the superman; second, Zarathustra’s approach is extremely anti-dogmatic and anti-catechistic; and third, Zarathustra’s approach is inspired by rejoicing in life. Zarathustra models ‘living creatively, with each part of the mosaic-like book acting as a new beginning, and as a self examining model of his own teachings – a “dedicated, sensitive, courageous and creative educator, well worth emulating” (ibid., p. 191). Writing in the same journal two years later, Jenkins (1982) responds with a summary of Gordon’s earlier argument and a portrayal of Zarathustra’s educational style. He surmises that Gordon fully approves of this type of creative, personal, individualistic and open-ended style of teaching. However, Jenkins makes the point that such liberal education is the antithesis of Nietzsche’s philosophy: “Whatever else he may have been the one thing that Nietzsche was not was a ‘liberal’, and it is unthinkable that his most famous persona, Zarathustra, was either” (p.253). He thereby questions the ‘use’ of Nietzsche for a purpose that Nietzsche himself would have flatly rejected, although ‘liberal’ is a contested term that accounts for a multitude of perspectives. This point of disagreement between the two writers highlights an important issue within Nietzschean debate – whether Nietzsche operates in the spirit of cruel domination or whether he advocates the existence of difference. This book argues the latter. Jenkins’ claim is that Gordon focusses on the form of Zarathustra’s teachings at the expense of content. When Nietzsche’s philosophy and Zarathustra’s message is taken into account, Jenkins believes (contra Gordon) that Zarathustra is both dogmatic and catechistic, and that Zarathustra’s (i.e., Nietzsche’s) dogma is the only way to explain why Zarathustra abandons the masses and seeks an elite audience, and why at the end of the day this ‘educator to be emulated’ has successfully educated absolutely nobody. Jenkins suggests that Zarathustra is elitist, with no intention of educating the masses out of their ‘natural’ herd mentality. He also believes that Zarathustra’s concern about having ‘come too soon’ stems from Nietzsche’s rigid belief in how great men emerge. Jenkins sees Thus Spoke Zarathustra as catechistic, providing little room for ‘free’ creation. On the contrary, he depicts a much less humane scenario in which “Nietzsche’s freewheeling, dancing creators, dance only on conditions that actually enslave the great mass of humanity” (1982, p. 252). Cooper (1983b) reviews the papers by Gordon and Jenkins, noting that both papers draw inferences about Nietzsche’s educational ideas from Zarathustra. He argues that these ideas contradict Nietzsche’s other writings that are explicitly

59

CHAPTER 4

about education. He suggests that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not about education and teaching as such; rather, Zarathustra/Nietzsche can be seen as the founder of Nietzschean philosophy and not necessarily exhibiting a teaching style to be emulated. The term ‘teacher’ as applied to Zarathustra is seen more as a title of greatness (like professor) than a description of educative activity. Cooper criticises Gordon for his muddling of existentialism with personal destiny. Nietzsche, he says, is clear that the idea of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ is not about finding a personal essence or destiny, but about becoming a “free, authentic creator of values, purposes, and ‘perspectives’ for oneself” (1983b, p. 123). He argues that an interpretation that leads to the horticultural version of ‘child-centred’ pedagogy does not fit with Nietzsche. Even if Zarathustra does have a ‘destiny’, others may not. Anyway, says Cooper, Nietzsche talks about ‘being’ a destiny rather than ‘having’ one, which may be a prescription for a small elite as “vehicles of an inevitable, ‘destined’, revaluation of all values” (ibid.). Cooper sees Gordon’s account as an inner one, helping people to delve into themselves, to identify and respond to their ‘personal destinies’. Jenkins’ concern with the outer focus on order of rank and overcoming as a social endeavour is also mistaken, according to Cooper. Nietzsche’s political preference is for a minimal State, guaranteeing the stability for the spirit of nobility to emerge. For Cooper, the spirit of the overman does not involve political tyranny so much as selflegislation, with the creative power to construct perspectives, confer meanings and escape mediocrity. Reference to richness is that of spirit and character. Cooper claims that Nietzsche’s criticism of democracy is not so much about the political institution, but the “ideology of equal rights, general happiness and wisdom of the people” (1983b, p. 125). In spite of the mistaken idea about individual destiny, Cooper concludes that Gordon is closer than Jenkins in identifying the goals of Nietzschean education. A weakness identified in the earlier papers lies in the ignoring of Nietzsche’s ‘psychological’ philosophy, even though it is central to his educational thesis. Golomb’s (1985) focus on the psychological view is based not on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but on his own reading of Schopenhauer as Educator. His interpretation is that man’s individuality can be attained through being liberated from ideological illusions, achieving the existentialist ideal of a harmony between the innermost self and its outer expression. The purpose of the unmasking is “to assist us in overcoming this repressive culture and to entice us into discovering in, and for ourselves, the genuine roots of our creative powers” (1985, p. 100). The focus is on exemplary figures rather than self-analysis – not surprising considering Schopenhauer was one of Nietzsche’s exemplary figures. The focus on an educator then is more to do with his existential consistency than the philosophy expounded, the who and the how more than the what. This position leads Nietzsche to reject as simple solutions both the Dionysian model of spontaneous pre-cultural man and the Apollonian model of theory and contemplation. Instead, authenticity is found in Schopenhauerian Man who reconciles the Apollonian and the Dionysian, pursues personal truthfulness and lives a life of struggle and conquest over his personal predicament.

60

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

Staying within the psychological sphere, Golomb draws similarities between Nietzsche’s ‘higher self’ and Freud’s super-ego, both of which feature a critical, moral agency as an antithesis to the instinctual drives of the individual. But in contrast to Freud who has the process as unconscious, Nietzsche contends that we can shape our ideals by freely choosing our educators and exemplary figures. In this view, Nietzsche’s self-overcoming is not about an a priori essence, but about freely creating values for oneself. Golomb argues that Nietzsche would reject Freud’s ego and id because of their deterministic nature, leaving the idea of a fruitful and genuine ‘higher self’ whose function is to direct toward the constitution and realisation of moral “supra-natural ideals” (1985, p. 106). However, a note of caution is sounded here about use of the term ‘supra-natural’, since Nietzsche’s focus was very much on the worldly self. Such a term may be acceptable if the focus is on becoming more that one currently is, rather than any aspiration to preexisting order or elevation of Platonic forms. The cultivation of a superior culture through creative reconstruction explains the elevated status accorded to artists, saints and philosophers, and for Nietzsche, justifies as a focus for education the production of individual great men. Also drawing upon Schopenhauer as Educator, Hillesheim (1986) describes the essay as an inquiry into Nietzsche’s agonistic philosophy. He suggests as possible alternative titles, ‘Evil as Educator’, ‘The Pedagogy of Pain’, or ‘A Curriculum of Suffering’ – alternatives which highlight the focus of the paper on the relationship between suffering and education. According to Hillesheim, the person who surpasses himself thus can be seen as a goal of education. This goal is distinguishable from other theories of self-realisation by its extreme openendedness and its “elevation of suffering and other evils as the cornerstone to self cultivation” (p. 172). The Greek agon as a public contest provides a model for individual living, in which man should take this concept and turn it inward: to apply it to the theatre of the mind and heart, to convert it into a universal principle of individual creativity. It is the contest waged within one’s own psyche, the confrontation of images, ideas, values and emotions, that provides the necessary fuel or energy for the dynamic process of self surpassing (p. 173). Consequently, ‘evil’ impulses and suffering are to be welcomed as necessity for strengthening of the spirit, and what has been deemed as good or evil needs to be revalued in the light of the goal of self-surpassing. Hillesheim is careful to point out that Nietzsche does not reject all values, but is concerned with an attempt at new valuations, so that anger can be put to good use and seen as a good. Physical and spiritual hardships are posed as inevitable for the truth-seeker, with various quotations from Nietzsche suggesting that the best that man can hope for is not the happy life, but the heroic one, with the emphasis on pain and suffering reflecting much of Nietzsche’s own life. Nietzsche is reported as judging a philosopher by whether he is able to serve as an example in his visible life and not merely through books. Hillesheim suggests that Nietzsche measures up to his own standard as a man who “heroically, continued to transform his physical torments and spiritual abysses into one of the most ‘yea-saying’ philosophies in the Western world” (p.

61

CHAPTER 4

176). Nietzsche’s requirement that the philosopher’s visible life be exemplary is difficult to reconcile with Hillesheim’s image of Nietzsche’s own visible life: the picture of a driven suffering: isolation and loneliness in his philosophical quest, his loss of friends and love and, perhaps most tragic of all, the unidentified disease that was progressively to devastate his body, forcing him to resign his university position in 1879, sending him wandering over Europe in search of a cure or at least relief from the painful bouts of migraine, prolonged vomiting, nearblindness, and sleeplessness that plagued him until his sudden collapse on the streets of Turin in 1889, hopelessly insane at the age of forty-four (Hillesheim, 1986, p. 176). To live with such a contradiction, one might have to accept one’s philosophy as never finished, and as emanating from the continuous challenge that life presents. Adopting quite a different stance, Simons (1988) shows the similarities between the educational philosophies of Nietzsche and Montessori. Although appearing to support both, he asserts that Nietzsche’s position is untenable. A number of quotations from Montessori are presented, which reveal the impact of Nietzschean thought on her work. In the spirit of the Nietzschean contest the Montessori child must struggle alone to achieve and evolve; the inner force of will should be expressed and directed towards constructive ends; the authentic individual is to be independent and free from conventional mores; and there should be less mutual protection through kindness and love. Simons presents a clear picture of many of Nietzsche’s central concerns, including his image of safety, comfort and love as the antithesis of the struggle towards the superior man. Nietzsche’s will to power is defended against Darwin, with the ideal of the overman portrayed in the botanical metaphor of the tall tree that thrusts outwards with great power, a unique specimen rather than an improving evolutionary response to outside agencies. There is also a focus on the purpose of education being the overman, rather than the production of people technically useful for the industrial and military machine. It is this latter purpose that Simons suggests is served by the emancipation of women. He refers to Nietzsche’s assessment of woman as a natural ‘cat’ being deprived of her enchantment under the cloak of ‘equal opportunity’. Simons at this point appears to be trying to rescue Nietzsche for attributing to women ‘feminine follies’, ‘dilettantism’, and ‘brainbewildering chatter’. The paper takes a surprising turn when, after devoting over seven pages apparently supporting Nietzsche’s philosophy and analysing his impact on Montessorian education, there suddenly appears the claim that “it seems quite wrong to say that creativity and authentic individuality are attainable only by a small elite at the expenses of the vast majority” (Simons, 1988, p. 348). Here Simons undoes the botanical metaphor, suggesting that the soil in which educated people have their roots is not depleted or robbed of value by being made available to millions. He adopts the position that although struggle is important as an evolutionary mechanism, the encouragement of genius does not mean everyone else should be treated like cattle. Despite Simons’ inability to reconcile his own

62

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

humanitarianism with Nietzsche’s sometimes perplexing will to power, the article makes a useful contribution to the exploration of the educational content of Nietzsche’s writing by exposing its thematic similarities to a recognised educator such as Montessori. Aloni (1989) labels Nietzsche a ‘counternihilistic philosopher-educator’, arguing that the guiding principle of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the exploration of cultural conditions and ways of life that could lift man to higher modes of existence. Three pedagogical dimensions of Nietzsche’s work are explored: recovery of health and worth as education’s aim, endorsement of holistic education, and a harmonious combination of themes and styles. As the first of three dimensions, Aloni describes Nietzsche’s radical redefinition of the aim of education as a focus on health and worth, arguing that Nietzsche’s counternihilistic notions of the Dionysian, the overman, noble morality, and the will to power are primarily conceptual tools which provide the means toward the elevation and enhancement of man – Nietzsche’s ultimate aim of a healing education. The second dimension is Nietzsche’s ‘pedagogical anthropology’: the search for the favourable conditions under which great human beings and noble cultures can come into being. This search is broken into two categories. The first appears to be historical, describing a genealogy of Nietzsche’s educational thought, comprising various inquiries into the ways in which specific philosophies, moralities, and religions hindered or promoted the enhancement of man. It includes the examination, in The Birth of Tragedy, of the nature and value of the Dionysian, Apollonian, and Socratic modes of living; the comparison, in Schopenhauer as Educator, of the Rousseauian, Goethean, and Schopenhauerian images of man; the critical inquiry, in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, into the origin, and nature of different types of moral evaluations; and the exploration, throughout his works, of the essential and common characteristics of the points in history in which great human beings arise. The second category appears to be more prescriptive, containing the following elements: the overman as a supreme ideal, for which all other goals in life should be subservient; a conception of man as a ‘bridge’ towards self-transcendence; and a creative self-determination of meanings, values, and ideals rather than a preordained moral world order. The third pedagogical dimension concerns the educative nature of Nietzsche’s works, and their potential for educating educators and empowering individuals toward authentic, autonomous, and creative life. Aloni refers here to Nietzsche’s challenge to mediocre life, and his contention that philosophical works should reflect the context of the author’s whole life. As an example of this, he believes Nietzsche’s poetic style, that abolishes the distinction between form and content, reflects Nietzsche’s holistic approach to life. Finally, Aloni stresses that Nietzsche’s philosophy requires us not merely to gain an academic understanding of his work, but to “appropriate Nietzsche’s themes and styles to establish an intellectual and existential context that would make it possible to overcome ourselves and the limits of nihilism” (Aloni, 1989, p. 306).

63

CHAPTER 4

Rosenow (1989) affirms Hillesheim’s earlier interpretation of Nietzsche’s conception of self-cultivation through suffering and pain, as opposed to feelings of satisfaction and pleasure inherent in Dewey’s idea of ‘growth’. He argues that the suffering arises because ‘self-overcoming’ involves not only the traditional concept of self-mastery, but also the ‘annihilation’ of the former self. Traditional education can be thought of as aiming at an internalisation of external authority in the form of reason and moral behaviour. However, for Nietzsche, the essence of man is his uniqueness and singularity as he strives to realise his potentialities through the will to power. When Nietzsche talks of ‘overcoming’ then, he is referring to the social and cultural mechanisms that adapt man to human society, repress his nature and deny his freedom. This view explains Nietzsche’s rebellion against established norms and values, the overcoming of his socially defined personality, and the lack of reverence for scholars and philosophers who advocate the supremacy of reason, although such rebellion is not seen as legitimating licentiousness, since man has to overcome his own ‘self’ as well. Rosenow also explains Nietzsche’s attitude towards pity as the ultimate sin, and the desperate struggle involved in overcoming both erotic love and the love of one’s neighbour; that is, overcoming one’s deep human need for mutual understanding and communication. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is provided as a model for Nietzsche’s view of the destruction and rebirth of Dionysus. Whereas God on the cross sought redemption from life, suffering Dionysus will be eternally reborn. Pain and suffering is thus portrayed as the prerequisite of life creation. Although there is widespread acceptance of much of Nietzsche’s criticism of the social and political establishment, Rosenow believes that the transformation of the individual through self-overcoming has not been so readily accepted. He sees a danger of nihilistic decline if we disregard the need for renunciation and sacrifice as part of Nietzsche’s ideal. The decline is explained in terms of the paradox of contemporary education, which promotes the traditional concepts of self-mastery and self-control (i.e., the overcoming of instincts by reason), at the same time as dismissing reason and liberating the emotions. The paradox and the nihilistic decline are not resolved by Rosenow, who resorts instead to Nietzsche’s description of himself as ‘dynamite’ – to be handled carefully and not easily contained. Hillesheim, writing again in 1990, responds to Rosenow’s ‘educational dynamite’ theory, making much of the difference between ‘self-surpassing’ and ‘self-overcoming’ as translations of Nietzsche’s selbstüberwindung. Although both authors agree that it is the traditional concept of ‘self-mastery’ or ‘selfcontrol’ that Nietzsche challenges, Hillesheim argues that the term ‘selfovercoming’ conjures up the very sort of dualistic thinking Nietzsche was trying to overcome. He believes that both ‘overcoming’ and ‘surpassing’ nuances are present in the original and that we must treat it not as a case of ‘either-or’, but rather of ‘both-and’. Hillesheim is also cautious about the use of the word ‘self’ insofar as it conjures up an image of a single unified thing. Nietzsche has no such ontological entity, and Hillesheim would prefer a ‘less misleading fiction’ such as a multiplicity of selves.

64

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

Turning from linguistics to the process of overcoming, Hillesheim suggests that the reason Nietzsche might advocate such a journey is that if life has any meaning and direction, it is to be found in the individual’s capacity and willingness to create and re-create his/her innermost self. The ongoing process of creation and recreation of one’s self, and thus of one’s ‘nature’, is what Nietzsche has labelled ‘self-overcoming’. It is this concept that provides the core of Nietzsche’s conception of true education and culture. In Hillesheim’s account, Nietzsche’s process involves emulating people, real or imaginary, who are worthy of being our educators. We learn to become who we are, or who we can be, by the stimulus of example, following the Platonic ideals in order to reveal the pathways to self-overcoming and a more authentic existence Although the most worthy figure we are offered by Nietzsche is the Übermensch, he also proposed as models worth emulating: the Rousseauian man, driven by a Dionysian desire for freedom; the Goethian man, of detached intellect and Apollonian caution; and the Schopenhauerian man, incorporating both the unifying passion of Dionysus and the individualising intellect of Apollo in the pursuit of truthfulness. All three represent in varying degrees successful attempts to give meaning to the human condition. Aviram (1991) takes the notion of overcoming further, arguing that, in spite of Nietzsche’s animosity towards humanism, liberalism and democracy, his ideal of the overman is not only possible, but also consistent with a liberal view of education. Aviram suggests that the different perspectives in the previous papers originate not in mistaken interpretations, but in contradictions in the Nietzschean text itself, and reconciles the apparent differences in meaning of the term ‘overcoming’ by identifying different mixes of rationality, religion, societal norms, essentialism and existentialism. He suggests these contradictions appear on three levels: the epistemological level, as the difference between perspectivism and objective ideals; the ontological level, as the possibility for existence of an overman; and the psychological level, with overcoming as spontaneity or a chosen lifestyle. Such a multilevel perspective enables Aviram to reconcile various and sometimes competing points of view. To extract educational thought from Nietzsche’s work, Aviram argues that it is useless to consider his work as intentionally paradoxical, or merely as metaphor. Rather it is necessary to work towards a coherent concept of the overman. Within Nietzsche’s view, neither the essentialist nor the existentialist notion of authenticity provides a basis for self-overcoming. Instead, Aviram suggests a continuum of ‘sublimation’, with the individual struggling to raise the level of feeling of power and will to power. Nietzsche’s objection to democratic ideals is posited as stemming from three assumptions; that individuals are not equal, that overman development requires an aristocratic or elitist society, and that freedom and equality diminish individual ability for self-overcoming. Aviram provides convincing argument to show that these assumptions are compatible with a Millian conception of autonomy (one without universal reason) and with Nietzsche’s concept of the overman as a genius able to contribute to the common good. Although Jenkins (1982) is adamant that Nietzsche is not a liberal, Aviram’s claim that Nietzsche’s ideas can be used to

65

CHAPTER 4

support democracy may be defended by his observation that Nietzsche “never intended to supply us with a systematic philosophical resolution of all life’s riddles” (Aviram, 1991, p. 226), and that in Nietzschean spirit, we should use modern theories to provide a productive framework of thought about what would constitute the desired individual. The issue of democracy as a Nietzschean project is given a further airing in the American journal a few years later with Sassone’s (1996) ‘philosophy across the curriculum’ project, in which she takes issue with the tendency to limit the use of Nietzsche to an aristocratic reading. This is not to suggest that a democratic reading is an ‘essential’ or ‘true’ rendition, but a claim that Nietzsche had many voices. The unveiling of a democratic Nietzsche, then, is the “disclosure of one of the discernible personae in Nietzsche’s texts” (Sassone, 1996, p. 511). The implications for education emerging from such a view involve a number of explicit principles: an individualised pedagogy, a ‘self-observational discourse’ that calls for strong self-critique, a recognition of language as constitutive of the self, ‘generativity’ and creativity as powerful driving forces, embodiment as a manifestation of existence, and health as an affirmation of life. To adopt a pedagogy informed by such Nietzschean perspectives, Sassone concludes, a teacher must be observant and responsive, must be continually reassessing the classroom experience (including herself), adapting to new concerns and enhancing individualisation and generating and articulating new interpretations of the familiar. The issue of Nietzsche and education is revived in the American journal two years later with two papers addressing the earlier debate. Johnston (1998; 2001) reviewed most of the earlier papers on the topic in what he called a ‘reexamination’, which adds little to the debate, except for his claim that Nietzsche’s overman represents a selfish and detached individualism with little regard for the social. The charge ignores Sassone’s reading and fails to take into account Nietzsche’s interactive engagement with his predecessors and his contemporaries. Another paper in the same journal that year is a contribution by Bingham, again adding little to the previous debate, accusing earlier writers of “literary naïveté” (Bingham, 1998, p. 229) for moving outside a narrow focus on Nietzsche’s concern with rhetoric. Conjecturing that Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is best taken solely from his early specific writings on the topic (a debatable conjecture), Bingham allows himself to stray into a comparison with Freirean theory and into Deleuze’s commentary on eternal return – a much later construct for Nietzsche, detracting from Bingham’s intention to maintain the particular focus on rhetoric. After a silence of almost ten years in the British journal, Rosenow (2000) addresses many of the earlier journal contributions in an interesting overview of the debate about Nietzsche’s educational legacy. The overview is framed as a comparison between Anglo-American interpretations (including those from Israel) with those of German scholars. He notes that the former assemble various ‘educational Nietzsches’ into a “whole and coherent portrayal of Nietzsche as a democratic and humane educator par excellence” (p. 678), whereas the latter decisively reject Nietzsche as having little useful to say about education. Rosenow outlines what is wrong with the Anglo-American perspective:

66

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche’s egoism turns into disguised autonomy, the aggression of the will to power is stamped with Kantian ethics, Nietzsche’s solipsism is uncovered as a road to universal education and the elitist order of rank becomes a paragon of liberal democracy (Rosenow, 2000, p. 678). Rosenow’s sympathies appear to lie with the German interpretation, where the focus is on whether Nietzsche’s conception of education stands the pedagogical test of time, and whether he is to be regarded as having elaborated an educational theory worthy of the name. This dual focus aligns education with pedagogy and fails to engage with a broader view of education (and therefore educational philosophy) as a political contest. What is missing from this focus is the question of whether Nietzsche’s ideas can be used to inform and enliven contrasting views of education, in line with Nietzsche’s own invocation for his followers to “lose me and find yourselves” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §3). Rosenow seems uneasy about what he calls the “manipulative misappropriation of Nietzsche’s writings” (2000, p. 683), indicating that he is possibly searching for an essence or a purity in Nietzsche’s meaning, although the conclusion of the paper is clear that educational theory has always been eclectic and selective, and that philosophy of education serves a political and social function. Although Rosenow appears to favour the German interpretation36, he sounds a cautionary note about any belief that a solution has been reached. Nietzsche, he says, “was and remains both a vision and an enigma” (2000, p. 684). The following issue of the British journal features a paper from Belgian author, Stefan Ramaekers (2001) who, also engaging with earlier journal contributions, takes issue with Johnston’s (1988) account of Nietzsche’s overman as an example of radically detached and solipsistic individualism. Using the notions of ‘obedience’ and ‘lies’, Ramaekers offers a perspectival account of a Nietzschean education, arguing cogently that human beings are embedded in their culture and history, with education as the process by which they are taught to see the world from a particular perspective. ‘Obedience’ and ‘lies’ then are a reflection of one’s current state of enculturation, necessary as a starting place for any new system of values. One’s knowledge of culture and history become ‘lies’ which can be remoulded to take account of new experience and perspectives. Ramaekers argues, therefore, that education can be understood as ‘teaching one to lie’, as initiating the child into a particular view of what is valuable and worth living for. Education, as teaching the child to put things into perspective, means “passing through what is worth living for without pretending that the perspective the child is initiated into, is universal and absolute in nature” (2001, p. 264). With no ‘essence’ of world against which to contrast the idea of ‘perspective’, the 36

Rosenow (2004) was to reassert in another publication his ‘German’ interpretation of Nietzsche’s perspective on education, as a review of an edited collection on Nietzsche’s legacy for education (Peters et al., 2001). He takes issue with the use of Nietzsche’s philosophy for ‘genealogical criticism’ and ‘perspectival interpretation’, and disagrees that Nietzsche would support a cultural pluralism of values. A response by one of the book’s editors (Peters, 2004) argues the shortcomings of the review for suggesting that the books authors should somehow be ‘concordant in their treatment of Nietzsche’s new philosopher’ and for the failure to see the intention of several of the book’s contributors to relate Nietzsche to poststructuralism.

67

CHAPTER 4

Nietzschean subject of education engages with reconstituting and rearticulating her perspective, with philosophy necessarily emanating from existing values, and language relying on customary metaphors for its ability to communicate. In this account, embeddedness does not constitute the final limit on future possibilities. In other words, there is no ‘self’ constituted permanently within an existing and objective truth. Nietzsche’s philosophy is portrayed not as pleading for mere subjectivism or for relativism, but as underlining the importance of serious engagement with what one stands for. Writing again in the American journal, Bingham (2001) works with Nietzsche’s early thoughts on education in an attempt to “demarcate the goals of Nietzsche’s philosophical project from the goals of German education of the late nineteenth century” (p. 337). In the attempt, he argues for a radical break from education that reifies rather than questions formulation of a ‘self’, preferring instead the notion of ‘self-reformulation’. Although the conclusion is clear and follows the author’s expressed intention, the paper takes a rather circuitous route conflating the notion of education with the institutions that are involved with it. Used interchangeably throughout the paper are such terms as ‘schooling’, ‘universal education’, ‘mass education’, ‘educational institutions’, ‘education in schools’, ‘educational system’, ‘education for the masses’ and ‘democratic education’. The terms are used in such a way that the reader is led to believe that Nietzsche holds no hope for education. Additionally, the paper claims that Nietzsche condemns the future of our educational institutions. As argued already, however, Nietzsche’s early writing clearly valued education as a preparation for the Übermensch and acknowledged the utility value of institutions for societal reproduction. Bingham’s argument for self-reformulation is underpinned by a distinction between the reified notion of the ‘self’ of modernity and the more flexible idea of Nietzschean subjectivity as process and multiplicity. Although the author talks in terms of process (i.e., ‘self-hood’ and ‘self-reformulation’), and even though he cites Nietzsche’s claim that the self is “not an essence to be described or prescribed” (p. 340), Bingham appears to be working with a particular entity against which he evaluates various claims. There is frequent reference to an essence of ‘self-hood’ that leads the reader back to the modernist conception of an entity called ‘self’, which the author on behalf of Nietzsche then rejects. In spite of the technical difficulties outlined above that bury education under its institutions and leave the reader stretched between reified ‘self’ and Nietzschean ‘subjectivity’, Bingham provides a useful exegesis of Nietzsche’s account of education and culture, and an eventual distinction between Nietzsche’s desire for education and his caution about the way its institutions functioned at that time. The Australasian journal contributes two recent papers to this discussion, both interpretive of Nietzschean epistemology to derive philosophical direction in education. Gregory (2001) works with the secondary nature of Nietzsche’s rationality – at heart, a Schopenhauerian construct with rationality as subservient to the Will – to portray human beings as engaged in two kinds of knowledge: the system building of rationality, and intuitive or imaginative experience of the world. “Without the former, experience would not be sensible enough to allow us to formulate intentions, but without the latter we find ourselves trapped in archaic

68

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

habits of thought, feeling and action” (Gregory, 2001, p. 26). The paper then relates Nietzsche’s scepticism to Peirce’s pragmatic account of rationality to yield implications for education. What follows from such a pragmatic account is the need to treat received ideas as fallible and therefore challengeable; and the importance of facilitating the creative participation of students in knowledge creation. Making our rational habits tentative is not a nihilistic step, Gregory suggests, since many of those habits will still prevail as eminently useful. Strategically, such a direction might involve cultivating intuitive experience, encouraging flexibility in the interpretation of those intuitions, along with providing practice in applying that intuition in ways that make practical sense. The other paper in the Australasian journal, (Tubbs, 2003), involves the return of the teacher caught between metaphysics and subjective experience, struggling to maintain faith in reason while knowing the contingency of the enlightenment. As much an engagement with Kant and Plato as with Nietzsche, the paper draws upon Plato’s tripartite model of struggle for goodness/justice within both the individual soul (desire, spirit and reason) and the city state (money-makers, auxiliaries and guardians) to inform Nietzsche’s valorisation of struggle. Like Plato’s struggles – the soul for its own truth and the city for justice, Nietzsche’s story of Zarathustra is interpreted as a teacher’s struggle for enlightenment – characterised in the tripartite nature of the three metamorphoses of the spirit (Z I, On the Three Metamorphoses). NIETZSCHE’S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

It is clear, then, that a Nietzschean philosophy of education must take into account not only Nietzsche’s specific writings on the subject, but also the commentary he has inspired from those working in the field. Consequently, it is proposed now to identify some of the main themes that need to be engaged with in the rest of this book. Rather than treating each of these as stand-alone items, it is proposed to draw the threads together and discuss them in relation to recognised paradigms: specifically, liberal-democracy, social democracy and poststructuralism. The approach taken recognises the ‘centrist’ nature of Western educational discourses and accepts that labels such as ‘liberalism’ or ‘democracy’ shape and describe overlapping trends rather than merely delineate mutually exclusive domains. Such an approach is seen as a means of bringing together existing practices with what is often seen in Nietzsche as a radically aristocratic perspective. By drawing together these seemingly disparate threads, it is hoped that something of value might be seen in Nietzschean scholarship to challenge, inform and enrich existing practices. In view of the above and in determining how Nietzsche’s thought might be applied to educational theory, a number of themes appear useful. Commentary in the journal debate generally reinforces the view that Nietzsche’s thoughts about education are relevant to educational philosophy today, with his figure of the Übermensch encapsulating much of his hopes for cultural enrichment through education. His aesthetic approach to life and health as an ethical source introduces a strong challenge to the imposition of cultural norms and to the rational overlay on social life. He goes as far as to question the supremacy of reason as relying on transcendental authority since it does little to enhance the natural life.

69

CHAPTER 4

Kantian scepticism about the limits of knowledge are still present in Nietzsche and extend into an interrogation of any metaphysical realm beyond experience, leading to a thoroughgoing critique of Christian morality and the rational basis for knowledge of ‘truth’. Nietzsche’s theme of eternal recurrence can be seen as an imperative to fully immerse ourselves and be the best we can be in the life we have. This intensification of life is concomitant with his view of life as will to power, to individual striving and to the highest hope for human possibility – the Übermensch. Nietzsche’s life-based philosophy calls for a holistic view of education in terms of both direction and pedagogy. The joyful and creative existence requires more than ‘scholarly grinding’ and scientific certainty, more than belief in metaphysical reality. Instead, what is required is to embrace the richness of aesthetic experience as the precursor to intellectual knowledge, and to face the sometimes grim realities of life with a courageous truthfulness. Such a radically different educational philosophy still yields familiar pedagogy, needing an educator who is challenging yet reachable, who exudes greatness worth emulating, who is attentive and adaptive to social and environmental factors, and who is creative in articulating new directions. Nietzsche’s educator would also question all that is taken for granted and facilitate the development of individual strengths and creative abilities, all the while serving as an inspiration worthy of emulation. Linguistic communication is important too in gaining mastery over the prevailing discourse, in gaining facility with new metaphors for life, and in experiencing language as a cultural medium. Nietzsche’s poetic and linguistic style challenges the staid conventions according to which we define our present reality and provides an inspiring platform for self-critique at both individual and cultural level. With his ‘death of god’ undermining received notions of truth and yielding multiple interpretations of what we mean by ‘self’, Nietzsche counters the prospect of nihilism and proposes higher modes of existence through the creation of new values, not bound by the strictures of convention or a moral world order. Creativity is a powerful liberating force against received dogma and uniformity, and it is in this capacity that Nietzsche offers us the possibility of social and intellectual independence in what he calls the ‘revaluation of values’. Nietzsche’s perspectivism, as a secularised version of the death of god, justifies the recognition of difference as an ethical principle. Strong in the Nietzschean canon is the notion of contest, struggle and suffering, leading to accusations of ruthlessness, cruelty and militaristic attitudes. However, such language can easily be interpreted as a metaphor for a contest of ideas, thoughts, and values – as much an individual quest as a measuring up to others. As a form of will to power, contest against adversarial opposition serves the purpose of what modern capitalist economies would call ‘competition’, not only in sharpening up the competitor him/herself, but also, as a result, in improving the standard of competition. Internal struggle serves to strengthen the spirit and provide the kind of challenge Nietzsche suggests is necessary for Übermenschlich development, in that it provides a mechanism for embracing suffering, coping with adversity and facing difficult obstacles.

70

EDUCATION’S NIETZSCHE

Needing to be addressed is the contention that Nietzsche’s philosophy is ‘elitist’ and extreme and that his Übermensch is a symbol of domination and oppression working against democratic rights and social justice. The extension of this position is that Nietzsche’s ideas reflect an animosity towards humanism, liberalism and democracy and so should not be used to support a liberal democratic view of education. After all, Nietzsche argues against social ideals taking precedence and against equality as an ethical norm. Countering this view are various interpretations of the term ‘overcoming’, including the overcoming of entrenched and outworn norms and values, the overcoming of personal difficulties and shortcomings, the triumph over personal suffering and tragedy, and moving beyond the limits of self-identity. Such a proposal provides the basis for a reworking of such aspects as individual freedom, the promotion of genius (individuality), the overcoming of adversity, respect for difference and the value of reflectivity and creativity. Admittedly, he does argue the case for great leaders – a case that requires discipline and obedience, and for an order of rank that does not accord equal status to all. However, such a model needs to be contextualised against the larger project that Nietzsche was involved in, much of which was a plea for an individual voice (possibly his own) against the ascendancy of a socialist State, against the certainty of metaphysics, and against conventional morality. Far from promoting the selfish and unrestrained individual, Nietzsche’s philosophy addresses the social and cultural relationship in which the individual is defined and embedded. Refusing to be subject to the homogenising effects of egalitarian politics, Nietzsche advocates the strengthening of culture by improving the lot of its highest individuals – a contentious goal that is explored in subsequent chapters of this book, particularly in relation to democracy and the politics of difference. Of importance to educational philosophy, especially in the realm of ethics, is the relationship between society and its contingent selves, and one of Nietzsche’s bugbears relevant to today’s thinkers in education is the level of restriction and control that should be exercised by the State in this regard, particularly in relation to the harnessing of education for economic purposes. Through government control, standardised curricula and the constraints of cost efficiency, educational institutions are charged with providing a skilled workforce and provide limited scope for divergence or difference. Targeting learners to achieve pre-defined, government-approved learning outcomes is as much about homogeneity and social alignment as about education. Where the notion of personal challenge is entertained in curriculum delivery, it is often in the sense of a person as an object ‘being challenged’, rather than as a subject ‘doing’ challenge. In the context of Western educational institutions, subjectivity is generally bounded by Kantian notions of autonomy, rationality and morality, and events must be within this sphere to be considered properly educational. In contrast, the act of establishing the nature and the parameters of personal challenge for oneself positions a powerful subject in charge of future direction. Such a notion of personal challenge is inherent in Nietzsche’s concept of ‘overcoming’. Through the figure of the Übermensch, Nietzsche portrayed his

71

CHAPTER 4

personal and often psychological philosophy of the importance of facing and overcoming the difficulties that life presents, establishing one’s own definition of existence, and standing back from the social definitions that constitute identity. The examination of Nietzsche’s explicit writing about education, along with the educational commentaries on his work, suggests that Nietzsche’s philosophy has much to contribute to a worthwhile educational philosophy. Because of the contestable nature of education and the broad sweep of Nietzsche’s brush, not every possibility can be examined here. What is attempted in the remaining chapters though, is a sharpened focus on the role of Nietzsche’s Übermensch as an educational theme, undertaken through critical analysis of prevailing liberal and democratic notions of education.

72

CHAPTER 5

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

LIBERALISM AND LIBERAL EDUCATION

Humanist philosophy emphasises the dignity and worth of the individual, with a basic premise that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. It is respect for this essential quality that is often posited as the source of other human values and rights. After Descartes, human experience and universal reason became the arbiter of knowledge about man and the natural world. Humanism supplanted to some degree the adherence to supernatural authority, and promoted the human senses as the source of empirical data. As truth assumed the high place traditionally accorded to God, science replaced religion as the legitimating narrative. This is not to say that religion has no place in the modern world, but rather to point out the valorisation of reason in the logic of modernity and its primacy in ordering the politic and therefore defining what counts as education. The invention of printing had provided impetus for humanism through the dissemination of literature and art, including the messages of self-knowledge from the human sciences. The study of letters and the liberal arts could provide practical wisdom for daily life, based on the assumption that “universal norms underlay the apparent diversity of examples found in humane letters, and that they could be illuminated by the skeptical mode of reasoning” (Schiffman, 1994, p. 69). Marshall (1996a) sees the development of liberalism as consonant with humanistic values in its quest to ameliorate if not improve the human condition, although he notes that rationalism has generally been aligned with scientific method. Gaus & Courtland (2003) convey something of the difficulty with the term ‘liberalism’. They note that it can be understood as a political tradition, as a political philosophy, or as a general philosophical or moral theory. As a political tradition, liberalism varies in different countries. For example, they argue, the English liberal tradition in politics has centred on religious toleration, government by consent, and personal and economic freedom; whereas French liberalism is more closely associated with secularism and democracy. Complicating matters is disagreement among liberals over the concept of liberty itself. Contrasted with Berlin’s (1969) negative conception of liberty as the absence of coercion or interference, is a positive conception of liberty. Thomas Green (1986), for example, advocates a focus on long-term interests rather than short-term impulses which may involve limitations on immediate choices of action. Within liberalism, interference must be justified in terms of promoting liberty, although because of definitional differences this exercise is fraught. These differences obviously have implications for how far the liberal state should intervene in private welfare and

73

CHAPTER 5

what degree of compulsion should be exercised in the education of its citizens. Positive freedom advocates a particular level of control by constituted authority, and is justified in the interests of the individual as a rational being. Despite their differences, liberals maintain the need to justify such interference37. Mill, for example, maintained an a priori assumption in favour of freedom, arguing for a “limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence” (1982, p. 63). Rawls's first principle of justice demands that “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system for all” (1973, p. 302). In Kantian terms, freedom is essential to moral action. In general, the liberal objective is to increase the individual’s opportunity for freedom, with proponents varying their approach depending on which version of freedom they espouse. Under liberalism, beliefs, authority and social structures are generally subject to rational scrutiny and to an idealised notion of ‘the good’ – in its many guises. Adopting the basic premises of the humanist tradition, and caught in the same definitional confusion as its parent discourse (liberalism), liberal education concerns itself with the development of personal freedom and social progress. It both relies upon and strengthens the notion of the individual as essentially rational, and theorises patterns of interaction between the individual and the group to which it belongs. Liberal education might be based on at least three critical assumptions: first, the idea of personal autonomy where individuals are free from the authority and dogmas of others; second, self-identity closely tied up with this notion of personal autonomy; and third, an abiding faith that education, through the development of personal autonomy, can ameliorate the human condition (Marshall, 1996a). In Nietzschean tradition, Foucault would deny that there is any such thing as autonomy, in so far as it accepts universal laws, moral or otherwise. This denial is treated in detail in the next chapter, so will not be elaborated here. It is mentioned though, to acknowledge the close relationship between Kantian autonomy and the subject of liberalism. Drawing on the work of Stuart Hall, Marshall (1996a) identifies historic tensions between progressive and conservative forces in the development of liberalism – tensions which are played out in differing approaches to individualism and rationality. A conservative strand, emanating from the theories of Locke and Hayek, espouses tradition, voluntary association, and freedom from constraint; and opposes the idea of liberating mankind through a system of rational design. A second strand, in its focus on progress, follows the ideas of Rousseau and Hobbes. It favours strong government for social reform, a restrictive notion of freedom as promoting opportunity through social control, and an emphasis on welfare rather than property rights. The second strand, in its commitment to the social development of individuals, often develops into large order rational systems, such as socialism or collectivism, and is sometimes referred to as ‘revisionist’ liberalism. The two strands correspond with Berlin’s (1969) differentiation 37

74

Gaus & Courtland (2003) argue that Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes were able to operate under the general rubric of liberalism, since their various social contracts insisted on justifying the grounds in which individual liberty might be restricted.

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberty, although both formulations are ultimately justified in the interests of the individual as a rational being. Gray (1986) supports the distinction between the two strands of liberalism, but argues that rather than being separate philosophies, they represent separate branches of a common lineage, with a shared commitment towards four elements in the relation between man and society. It is individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any social collectivity; egalitarian, inasmuch as it confers on all men the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings; universalist, affirming the moral unity of the human species and according a secondary importance to specific historic associations and cultural forms; and meliorist in its affirmation of the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements. It is this conception of man and society which gives liberalism a definite identity which transcends its vast internal variety and complexity (Gray, 1986, p. x). Richard Peters sees the Anglo-American ‘way of life’ as having emerged gradually out of the ‘practices of our remote ancestors’: a way of life involving “the determination to settle political matters by recourse to reasonable discussion rather than by recourse to force or arbitrary fiat” (R. Peters, 1966, p. 299). He sees the proper role of government not as an unfettered authority in promoting the common good, but rather as a necessary expedient, subject to moral appraisal and the safeguard of the rights of individuals and minorities. It could be that his years of teaching in working class institutions and his service as a stretcher-bearer in World War II brought about his desire to alleviate the effects of unwarranted privilege and authority through rational argument and democratic process. However, he does not make a collectivist appeal to the principles of socialism. Rather, his version of democracy and the ethical position he proposes expresses a firm commitment to individualism, although he is well aware that the individual is grounded in the community of the present and in the social traditions of the past. Although advocating democracy in principle and practice, Peters’ ethical prescription fits easily with Gray’s four elements of liberalism – it is individualist, egalitarian, universalist and meliorist. Peters’ articulation of liberal ethics promotes the Kantian notion of respect for persons as an important ideal. Nevertheless his primary emphasis on the rational individual paves the way for the restrictive conception of the “autonomous chooser” (Peters & Marshall, 1996, p. 85) at the heart of the recent neoliberal reforms to Western economies, and the consequent failure of historical society and community in terms of economic, social, democratic and cultural deficit in what Kelsey (1995) calls ‘The New Zealand Experiment’. ETHICS AND EDUCATION – A LIBERAL TREATISE

For several decades, Richard Peters was the leading figure in the British school of educational philosophy. His text Ethics & Education (1966) offered a coherent,

75

CHAPTER 5

well-argued position within the liberal tradition of education, although his philosophy was by no means universally accepted (see, for example, Harris, 1979). In Peters’ own words, the book was intended: to serve as an introductory textbook in the philosophy of education in the field of ethics and social philosophy; secondly it presents a distinctive point of view both about education and about ethical theory. It is hoped, therefore, that it will be of interest both to teachers and to students of philosophy (R. Peters, 1966, p. 7). Bringing together the dual traditions of liberalism and democracy, Peters advocated a universal ethics for education that required on the one hand: individual rationality, concern for truth and the giving of reasons; and on the other hand, a concern for democratic process and respect for fraternity. The seemingly broad focus, though, masks a narrow reliance on liberal reason as the basis of respect for others38, yielding a truncated view of the self strongly reminiscent of the Kantian formulation of morality. For Peters, liberalism is operationalised within the theoretical construct of democracy, which, he claims, confers on every individual the opportunity to be respected as the source of argument. However, the gap between theory and practice suggests transcendental ideals may be an insufficient basis as an ethical approach to education. Nevertheless, some aspects of his theory are difficult to ignore in the field of ethics, particularly if ‘respect for persons’ provides for toleration, or possibly celebration, of difference. Peters (1966, p. 45) stipulates three criteria for activities to be considered educational. They are: – that ‘education ‘implies the transmission of what is worth-while to those who become committed to it; – that ‘education’ must involve knowledge and understanding and some kind of cognitive perspective, which are not inert; and – that ‘education’ at least rules out some procedures of transmission, on the grounds that they lack willingness and voluntariness on the part of the learner. For Peters, education is involved with notions of ‘improvement’, ‘betterment’, and the passing on of what is judged ‘worthwhile’. While it is important to clarify meanings and specify usage of these terms, Peters acknowledges that their respective values have no empirical referent, and so for justification of worth, he turns to the sphere of moral philosophy or ethics, with its non-empirical concepts such as ‘ought’, ‘right’, ‘desirable’, ‘worth-while’, and ‘good’; along with distinctive procedures for inquiry. Ethics is the realm that, for Peters, provides the rational basis for action and consequently the moral justification for educational decisions. In arriving at an ethical position, Peters considers a number of essential elements, including the development of mind, the principle of equality, consideration of interests, freedom, and respect for persons. Each of these factors is not enough on its own, and what he advocates is a relation between all these factors where each is tempered by all the others. So for example, a presumption of 38

For Peters, even emotions are decipherable in terms of their rational basis.

76

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

freedom does not give an individual the right to act in a way that fails to respect others. Central to Peters’ position is the need to justify one’s position; that is, to give reasons for holding that position. If there are no reasons, he argues, it is mere whim whether one action takes precedence over another, and completely arbitrary whether one person’s wants are restricted in favour of another’s. Peters does not want to privilege feelings as any criteria for ethics, since he believes that feelings derive from a cognitive core, and that provided the reasoning is sound, the attitudes that follow will be sustainable. If feelings indicate dissonance, the solution is sought through an examination of the rational basis for those feelings. Significant in this aspect of Peters’ theory is the elevation of the rational core above the aesthetic response to life. From the basis of reason, Peters derives other attitudes essential for an ethical life; namely, an overall concern for truth, respect for persons, and a feeling of fraternity for others. It is easy to see how his philosophical position depends on a presumption of transcendental truth, as he argues: Any reflective person who asks the question ‘Why do this rather than that?’ … must already have a serious concern for truth built into his consciousness. For how can a serious practical question be asked unless a man also wants to acquaint himself as well as he can with the situation out of which the question arises and of the facts of various kinds which provide the framework for possible answers? (R. Peters, 1966, p. 164). The maintenance of the social order is important for Peters, as a means of protecting both the security and the liberty necessary for the pursuit of what is good, and as a means of preventing abuse and manipulation. Feelings of fraternity and the belief that distinct points of view are important, lead him to the principle of ‘respect for persons’: The feeling awakened when another is regarded as a distinctive centre of consciousness… connected with the awareness one has that each man has his own aspirations, his own viewpoint on the world; that each man takes pride in his achievements, however idiosyncratic they may be. To respect a person is to realise all this and to care (R. Peters, 1966, p. 28). The principle of fairness or justice is, for Peters, a presupposition of any attempt to justify conduct or to ask seriously the question ‘What ought I to do?’. Justice is represented by the idea that no one is presumed, in advance of particular cases being considered, to have a claim to better treatment than another. For Peters, social justice is best preserved by the establishment of general rules and a large measure of consensus at the level of procedural principles. An important presumption here is the ideal of democratic consensus, and the desirability of democratic institutions based on an “effective tradition of reasonableness and tolerance” (R. Peters, 1966, p. 303). He admits to the difficulty of pinning down an exact definition of democracy but suggests it requires some kind of procedure for consulting citizens about state action and policy. Although aware of its

77

CHAPTER 5

frustrations, failings, and hypocrisies, he asserts that only a democratic form of life is consistent with the fundamental principles of morality (R. Peters, 1966, p. 306). Peters’ ‘fundamental principles’ of morality are fairness, liberty and the consideration of interests, and he argues that their emotional underpinning in respect for persons and a feeling of fraternity for others as persons is accessible only to ‘rational men’. The primacy of the giving of reasons is evident in his earlier work too. Benn and Peters (1959) explore the relationship between social principles and the democratic state, and conclude that, while the ideal of democracy involves such features as free choice, majority vote, impartiality, sensitivity to all interests and the need for expression of alternative opinion, it is the giving of reasons that elevates democracy as a moral system. Respect for persons stems, they argue, from their status as sources of claims and arguments that underlie political ideals like justice, liberty and equality. Important educational implications of Peters’ ideas stem from his notion of democratic government that requires people with relevant experience, an ability to apply abstract principles, and a willingness to participate in public life. An ethical basis for education must then in Peters’ view, include such interpretations as: the democratisation of education by insisting that education should be freely available and fairly distributed; school as a democratic institution so that the practices of schooling embody the principles of democratic process; and education as preparation for a democratic way of life, so that students learn the attitudes, values and practices required for participating in a democratic society. Because the giving of reasons is offered as the basis for differentiating ethics from naturalism, superstition and religious belief, Peters’ position constitutes an emphasis on the rational individual in education. In this respect, Marshall (1996a) notes the similarities between the Anglo-American traditional strand of liberalism, and the promotion of a neoliberal philosophy based on the unimpeded freedom of the individual. However, he argues that it would be a mistake to interpret Peters as a neoliberal, since he emphasises the Kantian principles of consideration for the interests of others and respect for persons. Peters’ emphasis on democracy as a procedural principle thus softens his perspective inside liberal individualism. Given Peters’ incorporation of both traditional and democratic aspects of liberalism, a focus on his philosophy is also a focus on liberalism generally, not only in its basic assumptions but also in how it unfolds in practice. Liberalism requires some form of constraint upon individual freedom if anarchy is to be avoided. Those constraints may be external, as in police enforcement of the law or the imposition of Rousseau’s notion of the General Will. They may also be internal, as in the Kantian notion of moral duty stemming from the rational nature of the autonomous self. It is worth noting that educational policy in the Western world is increasingly underpinned by liberal and neo-liberal assumptions about the rational individual. The prime importance Peters attaches to the giving of reasons is a cornerstone of liberal education and foundational to his claim that education is an ethical enterprise. However, it will be argued here that the giving of reasons is insufficient ethical foundation for a defensible education. Rather, the interplay of freedom and constraint in the realm of the social world calls for new and inclusive

78

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

ethical formulations that emanate from a sphere more encompassing than liberalism. Although he appeals to ‘fundamental principles of morality’ along with more conservative liberals like Kenneth Strike (1982), Peters advocates a democratic approach to education and to ethics in ‘a tradition of reasonableness and tolerance’. However, democracy is fraught with conceptual and procedural difficulties, and even a democratic approach to liberalism requires a particular view of human identity that is at odds with Peters’ own ethical foundations. Peters’ ethical position is summarised here as bounded by liberal discourse. His main points have been delineated (without too much criticism at this stage) in such a way that the reader can assess whether the following critique is based on any misinterpretation of what Peters has to say. What follows shortly is a different interpretation of the territory described by Peters – a Nietzschean critique of the liberal morality underpinning Peters’ philosophy, and the practices that arise from it. The particular aspects of Peters’ theory that bear further examination in terms of their ethics are the metaphysical notion of truth, the universal assumptions behind social justice, the problematic application of democratic principles to political practice, and the commitment to reason as the ultimate value. Peters describes philosophy as an essentially co-operative enterprise, and suggests that, “Advances are made when two or three are gathered together who speak more or less the same language and can meet frequently for the purpose of hitting each other politely on the head” (R. Peters, 1966, p. 8). This chapter offers Peters a ‘polite smack’, which is not so much a dialectical challenge to the internal rationality of his argument as a different description of what it is to be ethical. This move is one that Rorty (1989) would support. He proposes that ‘speaking more or less the same language’ will result in ‘more or less the same ideas’, with intellectual progress as merely the literalisation of selected metaphors. What he advocates is a redescription of the territory, since the vocabulary of Enlightenment rationalism is an impediment to new ways of thinking. In line with Rorty’s idea of a replacement vocabulary, it is now appropriate to introduce some Nietzschean perspective to the debate, to prevent hardening of the categories and ossification of the discourse. A NIETZSCHEAN PERSPECTIVE

A multi-dimensional perspective may be more appropriate than universal morality in determining an ethical basis for educational direction. An exploration of difference as a feature of identity provides the background for such a view, and leaves Peters’ ethics both inadequate as a totalising rationality and wanting in its own judgment. Nietzschean perspectivism and genealogy offer a vigorous challenge to fundamental rational morality as the only and inevitable basis for ethical theory. In the spirit of agonism, Nietzschean critique acknowledges, and to some extent accepts, Peters’ claims for rationality, but insists that to be human is to be more than rational. What is proposed for educators is an ethic that respects difference and minimises rigid insistence on transcendental norms. ‘Otherness’

79

CHAPTER 5

and ‘identity’ are mutually interwoven, whereas the idealisation of the rational self creates and excludes the ‘other’. As a basis for critique of the liberal philosophy of education, I intend to draw upon some of Nietzsche’s ideas, not as a straightforward explanation of Nietzsche’s educational thinking, but as a selective application of three major themes recurrent in much of his writing. This is in keeping with Nietzsche’s disdain for rigid discipleship, and his exhortation to go beyond his ideas: “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.... You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §3). Although it is a creative and unverifiable exercise to imagine how Nietzsche might respond to the arguments offered by Peters, there are enough parallels in his work to suggest that the interpretation offered here is in line with much of Nietzsche’s philosophical outlook on life. Although Nietzsche admires Kant as a profound thinker and acknowledged the huge shadow he cast over ensuing philosophy, Nietzsche rejected the world of transcendental ideals as the moral guide for life, and saw possibilities for man far beyond the autonomous rational self constituted by Kantian reason. In many respects, the critique offered here constitutes a similar rejection of transcendental ideals and a suspicion about the ethics of an exclusive focus on the rational component of the self. Consequently, what follows provides a Nietzschean flavour to an exploration of what would count as ethics in education, without ossifying his ideas and being slain by the tumbling statue of Nietzsche. At this stage it is sufficient to identify these themes in a general fashion, partly to acknowledge the scope of Nietzsche’s thought, but also to see in relief how the interplay of these themes provides new possibilities for philosophers of education not only to engage in democratic process, but also to problematise the politics involved in the definition of democracy and in the application of democratic principles to the liberal practices of education. Nietzsche’s Perspectivism As the first of these themes, what has come to be known as ‘perspectivism’ is often used to describe Nietzsche’s refusal to accept political rhetoric as metaphysical truth. He refers to truth as ‘illusion’ and ‘error’, or more expansively as: A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force (TL §1). His scepticism is about all truth brought to light by man, as he argues that since man constructs truth through the use of reason, any truth found within the realm of reason is of limited value:

80

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding “truth” within the realm of reason ... (TL §1). Nietzsche does not, however, want to do away with truth altogether. Instead, his early unpublished notebooks offer a radically different account. Written in 1873, his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense offers as the criterion for truth the degree to which a particular description enhances human life, and the degree to which it promotes culture by transforming social life. The earlier cultures that Nietzsche admires (e.g., the Greeks) were not constrained by reason, and Nietzsche draws on them to embrace the Dionysian spirit of unconscious desire and its Apollonian transformation through illusion. This accounts for the high cultural value Nietzsche places on art and myth, as opposed to the modern world’s emphasis on reason, where art and myth are peripheral, and in terms of rational truth – merely illusion and error. In Nietzsche’s life-enhancing model, there is still room for the conventional categories of truth and falsity, in that he acknowledges conventional designations as essential for some form of social life. However, there is no recourse to an ideal world to assess accuracy of representation; rather that recourse is to the natural world, the world of culture, and the world of everyday social practices. In this way, truths (and the attempts to categorise them as ‘errors’ and ‘illusions’) function as life-preserving fictions. The move to a nonmoral sense means that there is no need to appeal to a transcendental world to ascertain truth value. Turning his back on the idea of truth as a mirror of reality, Nietzsche draws on his background in philology to come up with an alternative epistemology – truth as ‘metaphor’, a word derived from the Greek verb meaning ‘to carry over’, ‘to carry across’, or ‘to transfer’. Since, in a Kantian sense, subject and object are independent of each other, cognition in itself has no contact with the world. In other words, truth cannot be a mirror of reality; a concept is mere abstraction – a “condensate of multiple metaphors and metonymies” (Kofman, 1993, p. 40) and “not derived from the essence of things” (TL §1). Therefore, the idea of transference of meaning between subject and object is better explained by metaphor formation than by the exact replica implied in the mirroring model. Truth as metaphor, then, suggests the making of meaning from one’s existential predicament rather than from recognition of some ‘facts’ about the world. This distinction between the metaphysical idea of ‘truth in itself’ and the political utility of various empirical claims to truth39, is often deconstructed and signalled by Nietzsche with the use of scare quotes to signify dubious claims to truth. A perspectival approach problematises these claims, interpreting truth as metaphor, as perspective, tentative in its claims, and providing at best a ‘basis’ for debate. Perspectivism then, directly challenges the truth behind a universal

39

Foucault’s (1980) concept of ‘power/knowledge’ can be interpreted as a derivative of Nietzsche’s early thought about the ungrounded and personal nature of ‘truth’, and his later concept of will to power as an attempt to gain mastery of one’s circumstances.

81

CHAPTER 5

morality; it renders inaccessible a meta-perspective on truth; and questions fundamentalist approaches (e.g., the giving of reasons) as the only basis for ethics. In spite of Peters’ appeal to universal values as the basis of his ethical position, the relationship between education and perspectivism is not lost on him. In an appendix added after his Ethics & Education was written, he includes a section subtitled Informal Education, that acknowledges the importance of being able to see the world from the perspective of another. In contrast to his promotion of education as initiation, Peters sees the ability to listen to what another says (regardless of the use which can be made of it or him) as “one of the main hallmarks of an educated man” (1966, p. 88). He sees educational value in the process of ‘active participation’ in ‘shared conversation’ to construct a ‘common world’ to which all bring their distinctive contributions. Participating in such a shared experience is, for Peters, “to see the world from the perspective of another” (R. Peters, 1966, p. 88). There is no suggestion here that Peters is offering a Nietzschean interpretation of life as an infinite diversity of interpretations with no claims to ‘truth’. He is more likely advocating different vantage points on a singular world. Yet, he still acknowledges difference as implicated in the realm of educational ethics. Although he categorises these comments as referring to informal education, the practical distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ may have more to do with the politics of schooling than with an estimation of ethical value. Nietzsche’s (FEI) early lectures on education refer to the label ‘formal education’ as “a crude kind of unphilosophical phraseology” which has more to do with how institutions justify their existence than with a meaningless dichotomy between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ education. For the purposes of this chapter, the fact that Peters has categorised the acceptance of difference as belonging to an ‘informal’ category of education does not detract from the educational value he ascribes to it. Its value as a shared practice is to some extent in keeping with Nietzsche’s notion of truth as instrumental to the social world. Nietzsche’s Aesthetic The second of Nietzsche’s ideas used in this chapter is his concern with life, health and sickness. Contrary to the earlier Newtonian metaphor of life as machine, Nietzsche’s inquiry is often conducted at the biological level of humanity, with human life as an organism comparable to plant and animal life. From that perspective, rationality is an overlay and morality is a negation of life energy. For Nietzsche, Christian morality imbues life with evil, guilt and the need for teleological justification, while the rational ethics of Kant supplants obedience to a deity with the acceptance of duty based on transcendental reason. Instead, Nietzsche values life as an aesthetic phenomenon above science, morality and truth; with no need for transcendental justification: Behind your thoughts and feeling, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage – whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body (Z I, On the Despisers of the Body §4).

82

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

In tracing the development of Kant’s ideas from the ideal worlds of Platonism and Christianity, he unravels Kant’s logic (TI, How the Real World at last Became a Myth ). Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason posits the ‘real’ world as unknowable, and therefore, according to Nietzsche, unavailable as a source of moral duty. But as he notes, a rejection of the ‘real’ world (world-in-itself) also means a rejection of its derivative – the apparent world. Kantian epistemology then holds little truth value for Nietzsche, in that it removes the source of ethical direction to a nonexistent realm and prevents the sort of responsibility for one’s own life that characterises Nietzschean ethics. Thus, for Nietzsche, it is a moral system based on a fable. Nietzsche’s ‘brand’ of ethics can be seen as an aesthetics of life, an idea drawn from his picture of the early Greeks, and elaborated a century later by Foucault (1986) as an ethic of care, particularly care of the self. Any ethic that incorporates care for others must, for Nietzsche, flow not from an orderly set of reasons, but from an abundance of care for one’s self and the joy of living: “When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §1). Nietzschean Genealogy Genealogy, another of Nietzsche’s tools important in this critique, is linked to the previous two by its methodology. Genealogy problematises accepted patterns of belief and refuses to take for granted the ‘tired metaphors’ that have come to be known as truth. In that sense, it is perspectival. At the same time, genealogy grounds the critique of knowledge in the lived history of self-constituting human actors and thus affirms life as an aesthetic phenomenon. In his second Untimely Meditation, Nietzsche (UM II) outlines three ‘species of history’: as monumental, as antiquarian, and as critical; corresponding respectively to man as a being who acts and strives, as a being who preserves and reveres, and as a being who suffers and seeks deliverance. For Nietzsche, neither of the first two modes are sufficient to allow man to operate as a creative being who at the same time is grounded in his past. The third mode, critical history, worked out in his genealogical method, involves a process of investigation and reinterpretation; it explains why specific illusions and ideals have existed historically and how those ideas determine the possibilities for individual action; and it opens up further possibilities for self-definition. According to Warren (1988), genealogy thus provides a means of dealing with a growing sense of nihilism as our cultural practices lose their meaning: It is an attempt to give oneself, as it were a posteriori a past in which one would like to originate in opposition to that in which one did originate (UM II §3). This is not Nietzsche claiming that the actual events of the past can happen again in a different way. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that the meaning of past events is not locked into history, but constituted according to our current conceptions of meaning. Meaning and value therefore are not metaphysical; nor are they factual, genetic, or teleological:

83

CHAPTER 5

there can be no historical transmission of meaning in itself, only the transmission of the cultural signs, symbols, and languages as well as the material resources that are means to practices. Meaning is the product of a continuously active integration of historical resources into configurations of power as subjectivity” (Warren, 1988, p. 100). It is this renewable sense of history that constitutes the creative aspect of Nietzschean genealogy and allows for the reconstruction of identity and the appearance of new truths. Warren (1988) identifies in genealogical method three distinct, but interdependent, modes of criticism, each of which problematises particular constructions of cultural meaning: first, the logical criticism that focuses on the internal consistency of a system of ideas; second, genetic criticism, that traces the lineage (Herkunft) of a particular cultural entity; and third, functional criticism that accounts for the changing meanings of cultural entities in terms of their context of emergence (Entstehung) or their function within a historically specific form of life. It is a combination of these aspects that characterises genealogical investigations into what counts as religion, morality, history and truth, often by offering alternative explanations and possibilities that contradict the beliefs and values that are taken as given, as factual, as beyond all question. Working from the present, genealogy can unravel a variety of competing histories and thus suggest various possible interpretations of the present and the future, without searching for ultimate truth. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, for example, is an interrogation of Christian values, arising as “a new knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed .... a knowledge of a kind that has never yet existed or even been desired” (GM preface §6). It might be added: ‘or will ever be accepted’, considering that his genealogy exposes justice as evolving from an economic model of debt based on guilt, and his portrayal of morality as being developed through the intentional use of torture, sacrifices and mutilation. An understanding of Nietzschean genealogy is of vital importance in coming to terms with the corrosive nature of his philosophy. Genealogy does not lay any claim to universal truth in its reworking of history, but at the same times avoids the arbitrariness of ‘any story will do’ because it grounds the critique of knowledge in the lived history of self-constituting human actors. The multiple possibilities for self-creation leaves behind the Hegelian idea of the world evolving rationally towards the harmony of the absolute. In that sense it affirms life as an aesthetic phenomenon. The idea of genealogy then, offers competing explanations for what we take as current reality, defines ‘truth’ as a political contest, and provides a vigorous challenge to fundamental rational morality as the only and inevitable basis for ethical theory. What follows then, is a genealogical examination of the philosophy of education articulated by Richard Peters, involving a challenge to universal truth and morality based on transcendental reason, and a claim that codes of morality that disregard ‘other-ness’ are not ethical. It thus establishes the rationale which underpins Connolly’s (1991) exploration of identity and difference, not as essences of humanity, but as ‘contingency’, ‘contestability’ and ‘intertextuality’.

84

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

AN ETHICS OF DIFFERENCE

Connolly’s (1991) notion of identity is not a descriptive label that can be applied to a static or already existing self entity. Identity formation is a dynamic political process that rests on social definitions of difference, with the resulting identity not as an inherent truth about one’s being, but a self-reinforcing ‘circle of significations’. The contingent and relational nature of the process is emphasised by Connolly as he sees identity: constantly exceeded, subverted, obstructed, and confounded both by actors who resist roles for which they have been cast and by audiences imperfectly colonised by the circle of significations within which the prevailing politics of identity moves (Connolly, 1991, p. 210). Social life then is ambiguous, and political ‘reality’ can be challenged as ‘conventional categories of insistence’. Connolly draws upon Nietzschean genealogy to interrogate exclusions built into the idea of entrenched identities, to problematise and politicise the forms they have taken, and to ‘salute’ uncertainty and ambiguity. There is a superficial resemblance between Peters and Connolly in their formulation of ethical principles, insofar as both could be construed as advocating the idea of ethics as the arbiter of individual behaviour within an acceptable social life. However, unlike Peters, whose idea of ethics ultimately hinges on the rational individual, Connolly’s ethics is pragmatic and social, as he introduces the notion of ‘agonistic democracy’, a political relationship in which each participant welcomes the ‘otherness’ of difference. As an ethical strategy, agonism maintains a spirit of competition and adversarial respect, so that instead of overriding different points of view, closing down opposition, or enforcing community, contest is welcomed. So rather than needing to eradicate fundamental ethical systems, agonism advances itself as another political contestant in the ongoing discursive game, while at the same time problematising the nature of that game. In other words, agonism is not only the form of a proposed ethics, it is also the process through which such a form might be developed. In some respects, this may be what Peters has in mind in his advocacy of democratic principles. Yet the imperative of Peters’ rational categories precludes the open and ongoing negotiation inherent in the agonistic structure. Within the ethics laid out above, education can be interpreted as a political relationship, in which agonistic contest may develop, and in which contending identities and ‘otherness’ are nurtured. It recognises the social process in the formation of ‘self’, and in so doing, aspires to the Nietzschean project of historical culture as a focus for education. With an appreciation of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, the problematic generated by genealogy, the democratic diversity of agonistic contest and an ethic based on an aesthetic care for life, Peters’ rational system of ethics now begins to look bounded, and in places rather dubious in its own terms, especially in regard to his emphasis on the importance of respect for persons. Peters’ philosophy of education, with its respect for ‘rational men’, establishes rationality as a normative

85

CHAPTER 5

criterion, but in so doing, it minimises (if not excludes) much of what is valuable in the social world. Creativity, eccentricity, warmth, empathy and humour are not seen as contributing to a person’s worth. Establishing abnormal categories has a compounding effect: the formation of idealised norms not only generates abnormalities such as irrationality, irresponsibility, immorality, delinquency and perversity, but the abnormal are also excluded from contesting the nature of the categories. Underpinning Peters’ ethics is a depoliticised acceptance of the giving of reasons. In other words, reason governs not only those deemed to be living an ethical life, but also those committed to developing an educational philosophy. Rational argument is the only recognised mode of contest in the philosophy of liberal academia, since only the ‘normal’ are admitted to the debating chamber, with the most authority accorded to those who are established within traditional disciplines. Political challenge, a querying of an exclusively rational order, or a genealogical investigation of the prevailing moral authority, is characterised as postmodern or nihilistic from within the discourse, and the lines of demarcation between ‘the rational’ and ‘the other’ are reinforced. The formation and separation of otherness is divisive in its tactic, not only at the political level of group and social formation, but also within psychoanalytic formulations of the self, with some elements selectively repressed or excluded, on no other ultimate basis than their fit with a Platonic ideal of rational order. This does not fit well with the rhetoric of liberalism, which purports to embrace differing points of view with a positive attitude towards tolerance and diversity. While Peters cannot be said to be logically wrong in his argument for a rational approach to ethics, (for how could he be wrong when ‘truth’ was hidden behind the ‘bush’ of reason?); it is argued here that ‘otherness’ and ‘identity’ are mutually interwoven, and that the idealisation of the rational self creates and excludes the ‘other’. Considering the importance Peters attaches to ‘social justice’ as the ‘rockbottom’ foundation of ethics, such exclusion could only be justified by ignoring the selective nature of a politics of normalisation and the contingent creation of categories of mental disorders, social misfits and political scapegoats. If these categories are in themselves not violent enough in their objectification of human beings and their exclusion of vast tracts of humanity, their use in the distribution of social capital contravenes Peters’ own idea of social justice, with a person’s worth being morally judged according to standards of supposedly ‘objective’ rationality. Ignoring the political forces at work in the production of subjectivity constitutes social injustice, not only in the selective distribution of the benefits of society, but also in excluding all those aspects of the self that are not subject to reason; including the elements of desire and illusion that Nietzsche sees as part of being human and essential to a non-nihilistic culture. The genealogical critique of the notion of depoliticised individuality (i.e., the Kantian subject) creates new possibilities that undermine the certainty of liberal individualism. This process also creates problems for Peters’ theory in terms of his ‘concern for truth’, because, if there are new and unexamined possibilities, or if we entertain Foucault’s idea of ‘numberless beginnings’, then the closure of Peters’ deductive logic is suspect. His ‘truth’ begins to resemble Nietzsche’s

86

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

‘metaphorical illusion’, or even worse, as Harris (1979, p. 129) argues, the intentional promotion of ignorance in the preservation of particular interests. While Harris’ Marxist analysis is also problematic in its privileged access to the ‘reality’ underneath ideological distortions, it is valuable in emphasising the political nature of education in establishing social identity, and in suggesting that the prevailing order might not define a neutral political space. Peters’ position holds that it is reason that distinguishes moral action from private likes and whims. In the style of agonistic debate, it is not intended to discount Peters’ position completely, or to deny the benefits of reason in whole realms of enlightenment activity or its instrumental benefits in a modern world. However, it is argued here that ethics needs to stem from more than just the rational tradition, for it is hard to imagine a rational approach generating an ethical attitude if there is not already a generous sense of abundance in the self: “When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtues” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §1). ETHICS AND DEMOCRACY

Bearing in mind the later chapter on democracy and education, the discussion of democracy in this current chapter will be brief, with criticism limited to the way in which Peters argues that his liberal theory should be put into practice. It is not intended as a full investigation of ethics and democracy or as an acknowledgement of those points with which the current author agrees. Rather, it is intended to highlight some of the shortcomings in a liberal democratic basis for a universal system of ethics. The preface to Richard Peters earlier work with Stanley Benn (1959) has both authors taking full responsibility for what they see as the theme of the book: – the close relationship between what is implied in ‘being reasonable’ and the principles and institutions of the democratic state. So it is assumed that these ideas can be taken as a strong influence on his later text Ethics and Education. Their justification for democracy as a system draws upon the theory of natural rights, stemming from the individualism of the seventeenth century (and in particular John Locke), which, they say, recognised the moral principle that every person must be respected as a source of claims, and must not be treated as a mere instrument; and further, that all interests must be weighed impartially (Benn & Peters, 1959, p. 350). On the surface, their prescription appears in keeping with the direction of this book, although, in practice, what they argue for does not live up to the promise. They vigorously defend their theoretical construct with a number of prescriptions for democratic processes; for example, democratic leaders are bound to give reasons for their decisions if they want to maintain voter confidence; politicians must listen to their constituents and attend to a great variety of sectional claims; electors need full information about possible alternatives; channels of publicity must not be monopolised by any particular interest or party, dangers of persuasion by organised propaganda must be minimised.

87

CHAPTER 5

In spite of their optimistic theory, their analysis acknowledges some of the difficulties inherent in the practices of democratic government. They acknowledge that the concept of a ‘unified will’ is utopian in that conflicts will always exist, but they see democracy as the best way to deal with the inevitable conflicting claims. They see the majority principle as important in a democracy mainly as a way of ensuring sensitivity to the widest possible range of interests. It is this sensitivity, they say, which distinguishes democracies from ‘plebiscitary dictatorships’. Peters (1966) suggests that democracy attends to the ‘fundamental principles of morality’: fairness, liberty and the consideration of interests. The age-old problem of liberty is not resolved by such a suggestion however, as it is still problematic how much freedom the individual can have in a system that is aiming for consensus decisions. In practice, democracy allows some voices to be heard, as long as they fit within accepted parameters. Even though no one person is fully represented by a majority, majority democracy is still posited as the best system. Peters concedes, however, that democracy is impracticable because of its extraordinary demands on ordinary citizens (R. Peters, 1966, p. 304). In modern parliamentary democracy, it is not always the party with the majority of the vote (or even the largest share) that assumes power, and in the case of coalition governments, the balance of power is often held by a very small minority. A democratic system of government, therefore, may conduct its business or make decisions in ways that disadvantage the majority of voters. In addition, it negates those who refuse to vote on an issue, those with insufficient information to take part, those who object to the authority under which the vote is held, and in Peters’ own admission, the 80 per cent who don’t know what to make of it all. Many of Benn & Peters’ prescriptions for democratic government are missing in the age of televised politicianship. Politicians, under the guidance of public relations consultants, spend more time making an impact than listening to constituents, press conferences are timed for maximum publicity, journalists and reporters are governed by commercial presentation, and information is likely to be delivered as commercial sound bites compatible with advertising schedules. Rather than Peters’ ‘well-informed constituent expressing a rational opinion’, today’s voter is more likely to be a well-massaged consumer of television images. Politicians often use the aggregate term ‘the public’ to prescribe how individuals should think about an issue. The ‘public’ is certainly not a self-constituting group, but represents the category of ‘otherness’ in political decision-making, those about whom the decisions are made in the interests of ‘communal harmony’. The agonistic position allows for and even promotes the existence of active minorities who can ensure that competing points of view are recognised, and that any harmony that arises, does so from a space where separate voices are protected. As a theoretical ideal, democracy provides for gradual incremental change, preserving the prevailing order and removing the need for messy revolutions or authoritarian decree. Liberal democracy then, like its attendant rationality, is attractive as an ideal, but to believe that the ideal is achievable, ignores Peters’ own admission about the ‘frustrations’, ‘failings’ and ‘hypocrisies’ of such an ideal in practice. News media constantly present violent images of ‘peace-making’ and ‘truce-monitoring’ troops destroying whole countries and killing people in the

88

NIETZSCHE, LIBERALISM AND EDUCATION

interests of liberation, world peace, security and democratic freedom, while their governments benefit economically from providing post-war aid to those same nations. National identities are formed by constructing and denigrating otherness, through such terminology as ‘insurgent dissidents’, ‘communist infiltration’ and ‘fascist regimes’. The language of our liberal society has not yet adopted such phrases as ‘creeping democracy’, ‘capitalist rebels’ or ‘liberal guerrillas’, or learned to examine the ideals of liberalism or democracy from alternative perspectives. Everyday ‘common sense’ assumes the status of truth, especially our metaphysical notions of the self, the transcendental nature of truth, and the capacity of language to give accurate descriptions of reality. A genealogical approach, by adopting a different political and historical perspective, problematises the ethics of many practices in our systems of democracy, and thereby undermines the certainty of Peters’ prescription for democracy as the ethical basis for education. In highlighting the importance of discussion, Benn & Peters acknowledge that discussion presupposes a consensus on fundamentals, for where this is lacking, they say, men will treat one another as scoundrels, and differences of opinion will be undiscussable: Where men start from different assumptions, there are no adjustments and no compromises generally felt to be fair and reasonable. In such conditions politics is a cynical grasping for whatever advantages temporary power combinations can secure. .... without appropriate attitudes, and the will to conduct politics in a rational and tolerant spirit, democratic institutions work undemocratically (Benn & Peters, 1959, p. 353). If it has done nothing else, this chapter has surely suggested that different assumptions are not only inevitable, they are to be welcomed as part of formulating a system of ethics – particularly one that might be considered an ‘ethics of difference’. The presumption of consensus within a liberal democratic formulation suggests, at base, a fundamentalism that prescribes the limits of what can be said, denigrating the possibility of agonism and precluding anything but cosmetic differences. In Rorty’s terms, the result is the literalisation of prevailing metaphors and an impediment to new ways of thinking – anathema for education. An ethics based on agonism favours a non-closure on identity, an acceptance of differing conceptual schemes, and a softening of the criteria for what would count as a point of view. Peters’ ethical basis for education is welcomed as one such point of view, but is resisted in its entirety because it searches for an idealised version of the truth. If Peters were to achieve the closure inherent in the universal ethic that he seeks, his work would fall prey to its own moral judgments, based on its exclusivity, its rigid prescription for a particular identity, and its insistence on a transcendental rationality as the true order for human life. Any recommendation for an ethical formulation needs to be procedural rather than substantive, inclusive rather than exclusive, and ongoing rather than finite. Nietzschean perspectivism does not lay out a totalising plan for action, or even a coherent philosophical framework for universal agreement. What is advocated instead is an ongoing problematisation of the rational overlay on social life and a continuous interrogation of the discursive practices that subjugate ‘otherness’. In

89

CHAPTER 5

calling for multiple points of view, the Nietzschean critique of dogmatism avoids certainty in the ethical realm and may be “an important voice to heed in constructing a politics that can challenge the panoply of emerging fundamentalisms” (Schrift, 1995, p. 125).

90

CHAPTER 6

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

NIETZSCHE AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Increasingly, philosophers of education are turning to ‘post’ discourses for explanations of diversity. Within the postmodern condition, the artist and the writer are not governed by pre-established rules or judged according to predetermined categories. Rather, they are “working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 81). Lyotard suggests it is not our business to supply ‘reality’, or to provide a totalising unity for irreconcilable language games. The price for such a quest is too high, he warns: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience (Lyotard, 1984, pp. 81-2). Less favourably, Cooper (2003) laments the ‘contrived depthlessness’ of postmodern works, in his claim that they “offer ‘no promise of a deeper intellectual experience’, and are without any ambition to reveal ‘the true nature of a unified … underlying reality’” (p. 209). He summarises three typical criticisms of the postmodernist philosophical stance (although similar criticisms might apply to post-structuralism): first, that it often parodies traditional philosophy – in its oversight, for example, of Enlightenment thinkers’ acknowledgement of the limitations of a priori reason; second, the weakness of many of its arguments, due in most cases to a failure to heed elementary distinctions – for example, in confusing the idea of ‘invented’ with ‘optional’ in relation to conventions and social constraints; and third, its self-defeating character – in its denial of the possibility of ‘truth’ (pp. 213-214). Cooper acknowledges (but does not agree with) a more ‘moderate’ position, which might reject foundationalist accounts of truth while still accepting the possibility of objective agreement on truth, knowledge and moral norms. Without a firmer basis of reference, he argues, “the whole enterprise of justification and reason-giving collapses” (p. 216). However, it is argued here that such a heavy reliance on reason as the basis for criticism of postmodern endeavours constitutes a search for firm ground and thus refuses the ‘play’ that characterises the ‘post-’ discourses, closing the door on the very engagement that educational philosophy invites. At one level, such resistance is a ‘reasonable’ philosophical response, although it might also be interpreted as institutional conservatism in defence of the Enlightenment norms that educational institutions pride themselves on – ‘truth’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘progress’.

91

CHAPTER 6

Although the terms ‘postmodernism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ are sometimes used interchangeably, they can be differentiated by their theoretical objects – ‘modernism’ and ‘structuralism’ respectively. Drawing on the work of Lyotard, Peters & Wain (2003) characterise postmodernism as “a general cultural ethos marked by an attitude of deep ‘suspiciousness towards metanarratives’” (p. 65) – particularly those of emancipation and progress. Postmodernism is not represented as a total break from modernism, but incorporating new presentations of the modern. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, is represented as a ‘mode of thinking’, a ‘style of philosophising’, and a ‘kind of writing’ related to structuralism. It cannot be reduced to a set of shared assumptions, a method, a theory, or even a school, but embodies different forms of critical practice with many different but related strands. Poststructural thought is seen to occupy a broad territory, including: a critique of Renaissance humanist philosophy and its rational, autonomous subject; a view of language and culture as linguistic and symbolic systems; a belief in hidden structures that govern our behaviour; and a shared intellectual inheritance from European formalism; the reintroduction of historical narrative; a challenge to foundationalist science; the undermining of Western logocentrism and metaphysics; a critical approach to the idea of technology; a problematising of political identity in relation to modern liberal democracies; an engagement with Foucault’s work on governmentality and state reason; an exploration of philosophies of ‘difference’; a suspicion of transcendental arguments and viewpoints; diagnoses of ‘power/knowledge’ (à la Foucault); and a focus on the politics of globalisation and the ‘knowledge’ society (Peters & Wain, 2003). Sarup (1993) points out a number of similarities between structuralism and poststructuralism in the way they both function as critique: as a critique of the human subject (differentiated from the ahistorical ‘individual’); as a critique of historicism and its association with an overall pattern in history; as a critique of meaning that calls into question the structural relationship between the signifier and the signified; and as a critique of philosophy in its restricted focus on theory. However, there are differentiating features as well. Poststructuralism tends to regard truth as multiplicity, to exult in the play of diversity and difference, and to engage in the continual process of reinterpretation of meaning. It is within poststructuralism that Poster (1989) locates thinkers such as Baudrillard, Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze and Foucault; thinkers, he suggests, who might reject the designation as ‘poststructuralist’ but whose ‘provisional interpretive stances’ squarely face the limits of ‘totalising, universalist discourse’ and address the “failures of the great ‘metanarratives’ of liberalism and Marxism.” (Poster, 1989, p. 28). Any reconstructive critique, Poster argues, must be accomplished on the “difficult terrain of a Nietzschean view of the truth” (ibid.) Nietzsche has been acknowledged as a turning point in “the entry into postmodernity” (Habermas, 1987, p. 83), providing inspiration for Heidegger, Bataille, Derrida and Foucault. These thinkers, along with Deleuze and Lyotard all used Nietzsche to question the scientific and universalist basis for knowledge. The French uptake of Nietzschean ideas is evident in such poststructuralist themes as Derrida’s critique of binary thinking and his deconstruction of the taken for

92

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

granted, Foucault’s ideas on subjectivity, Deleuze’s account of the productivity of desire, Irigiray’s feminist tribute to Nietzsche, Cixous’s feminine libidinal economy, and Kofman’s treatment of metaphor as a legacy of Nietzschean perspectivism (Schrift, 1995). Other themes to be considered in a poststructural analysis of Nietzschean thought include the valorisation of an aesthetic approach to life, the notion of life as play, and the image of the ‘self’ as merely theatrical masks. This chapter will explore a few aspects of poststructuralist endeavour to show Nietzsche’s corrosive effect on the basis of humanism and the Hegelian subject, and the significance of a poststructural view of education. In keeping with a broad interpretation of the ‘post’ discourses as a Nietzschean critique of modernity, the chapter will focus on: the critique of enlightenment reason as it applies to Hegel’s notion of progress; the relation between power and truth in the maintenance of social order; the play of difference as a critique of ‘grand narrative’; deconstruction of the ‘text’ and ‘the author’ in favour of an interpretive paradigm; and the self as multiplicity and creation. The deconstruction of singular meaning challenges educators to enter critical and constructive dialogue with each other, to interpret ‘otherness’ as tentative and to avoid the closure of final definitions. CRITIQUE OF HEGELIAN REASON

Hegel amplified the importance of reason, suggesting that to “speak of ‘many’ philosophies is to regard them as necessary stages in the development of the one philosophy, or of reason coming to consciousness of itself” (Hegel, 1985, p. 91). He saw reason as the divine element in man, and reality to be understood as the absolute, unfolding dialectically in a rational process of self-development. The ‘absolute’ can be thought of as a person-like entity in that it reasons and has intentions and goals. For Hegel (1998), individuals are not genuine ‘subjects’ as they have ‘no being in themselves’. One’s ‘essence’ lies in the universal rather than in the individual, with a sense of ‘alienation’ arising from its perceived individuation. For Hegel, the process of the absolute’s self-development is the process of its moving ever closer to absolute knowing, towards a Zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the age’ in which there is a general consciousness of the absolute as the only genuine subject. The logic that governs Hegel’s Absolute Spirit is dialectic – thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and the continual process of intellectual and historical development. In that each synthesis was considered of a higher order than its previous thesis, the dialectic provided a logic of progress. Enlightenment, for Hegel, is the application of scientific reason in discerning a rational pattern to all of nature, until – with realisation of the absolute – “Spirit that knows itself as Spirit” (Hegel, 1998, p. 122), the end of history.40 40

Hegel’s absolute idealism is still evident in Nietzsche’s early work – still under the considerable influence of Schopenhauer – in which he offers ‘a metaphysical comfort’ in a brief respite from the phenomena of ‘countless forms of existence’ and in the experience of ‘primordial being itself’: happy, not as individuals but as “the one living being, with whose creative joy we are united” (BT §17).

93

CHAPTER 6

Hegel held the State as the full and explicit expression of the Absolute, necessitating a subjugated role for the Church. Young (2003) argues, however, that despite the grand view of the Absolute, Hegel is primarily a Christian theologian who seeks to naturalise theology, and to overcome the alienating dualism of the Middle Ages with an integrated monistic account of reality. The charge is that Hegel’s ‘spirit’ is really his account of God and therefore not able to be contained within the human parameters of rationality. Attempts therefore to limit it within the laws of Hegelian dialectic constitute “a kind of blasphemy … a spiritual claustrophobia”, since such an entity is “ultimately accessible only to poetic thinking” (Young, 2003, p. 77). Munzel (2003) is at pains to point out that despite a number of apparent similarities in the philosophical projects of Kant and Hegel – the appeal to Bildung, the formation of mind and character, the notions of freedom, progress towards maturity, and the union of nature and freedom – the differences in their respective philosophies make all the difference for education, resulting in “two fundamentally different pedagogical strategies” (p. 121), discernable in their approach to the notions of ‘autonomy’ and ‘control’. Whereas Kant promotes an individual path to autonomy as an educational goal, Hegel’s perspective advocates the progress and self-actualisation of world spirit – to which the individual is subservient. Herein lies further clarification of the difference between negative and positive conceptions of liberty, since for Hegel there can be no individuated seeker of freedom. Nevertheless, the path to enlightenment lay in the process of educating reason. Education denoted the methods by which a society hands down from one generation to the next its knowledge, culture, and values, while at the same time providing for expansion of knowledge and cultural progress from generation to generation. For Kant, children were to be educated, not for the present, but for an improved future “in a manner which is adapted to the idea of humanity and the whole destiny of man” (Kant, 1960, p. 14). In Hegelian terms, education presupposes a “state of imperfection from which the individual is to be raised to a state of relative perfection ... the regulated process of maturing the whole being of the individual” (Bryant, 1971, p. 77), with the emphasis on eventual wholism. Despite differences between Kant and Hegel, the modernist notion of progress underlying mankind’s destiny facilitates a developmentalist model of education, commonly divided by teachers into a variety of domains: physical, mental, emotional, moral and social. Since Rousseau, the focus of education broadened from moral training through formal routines and disciplines, to include methods that adapted to the ‘natural’ development of the child. In line with Rousseau’s preference for expression rather than repression as an educational technology, ‘progressive’ educators have attempted to balance the learner-centred curriculum with the traditions of the liberal disciplines. Typical of this movement are Pestalozzi’s ideas of children learning by discovery in an atmosphere of love (May, 1997), Froebel’s concept of the kindergarten (Hultqvist, 2001) and Dewey’s pedagogic creed (Moss & Petrie, 2002).

94

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

Although Nietzsche predated the use of the term ‘poststructural’, his work has been a major influence on poststructural thought, especially in his attack on the Hegelian dialectic. Deleuze sees no possible compromise between Hegel and Nietzsche, and sees the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy as “setting out to expose all the mystifications that find a final refuge in the dialectic” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 195). Deleuze identifies three principal ideas that define the dialectic: first, the idea of the power of the negative in opposition and contradiction; second, that suffering and sadness have value; and third, that positivity is achieved by negating the negative. The Hegelian subject can achieve positivity only in opposition to a negative power or through negating the other. Nietzsche saw Kant and Hegel as prisoners of a limited conceptual model, and saw the need for an affirmative philosophy not bounded by negativity. He saw the ascetic process of subjecting life to a negative gaze as the basis for both Christianity and slavery, favouring instead affirmative concepts such as multiplicity, becoming and chance: “The affirmation of multiplicity is the speculative proposition, just as the joy of diversity is the practical proposition” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 197). Poststructural critique challenges the Enlightenment claim to a universal conception of human reason as the sole standard of rationality, because it “allegedly underwrites all knowledge claims, irrespective of time and place, and provides the ground for the unitary subject considered as the agent of historically progressive change” (M. Peters, 1996, p. 2). Although rejecting the primacy of reason in human affairs, Nietzsche does not do away with the concept altogether. His unpublished notes suggest he saw reason as a “system of relations between various passions and desires” (WP §387), its origins forgotten and its utility representing the “expediency of a certain race and species” (WP §278). In contradistinction to the Enlightenment thesis, his On the Genealogy of Morals (GM) depicts reason as being arrived at through the training of memory and conscience. He describes its historical development as involving the application of punishments and torture such as stoning, impaling, ripping apart, boiling in oil, cutting flesh from the chest, and also the practice of smearing the wrongdoer with honey and leaving him in the blazing sun for the flies: With the aid of such images and procedures, one finally remembers five or six ‘I will not’s,’ in regard to which one had given one’s promise so as to participate in the advantages of society – and it was indeed with the aid of this kind of memory that one at last came ‘to reason’! (GM II §3). Although the account is colourful, it is clear that Nietzsche saw political forces at work in the development of reason, and a grand narrative built on a priori reason as suspect. The systematic violence documented by Nietzsche contravenes the individual dignity and freedom at the heart of liberal morality and cannot be defended on moral grounds since it fails to show the respect for persons as ends in themselves required of liberal morality. It also questions the lofty origins of Hegel’s Absolute as reason itself. Aside from the genealogical problem, Poster (1989) points out the logical paradox involved in the idea of supremacy of reason, in that it postulates itself as transcendent, thereby constituting the world as one of its objects while at the same

95

CHAPTER 6

time positioning reason as another object in the world41. While reason is the subject of analysis, the same reason is not effective as its own analytical tool. PERSPECTIVISM AND REGIMES OF TRUTH

In Nietzsche’s interrogation of the primacy of reason, philosophical claim to truth is a manifestation of the will to power. His casting of ‘truth’ as ‘illusion’, as ‘error’ and as ‘worn-out metaphors’ (TL) might be interpreted at best as a view of truth as naïve belief involving incomplete or mistaken evidence. However, there is reference in his writing to the concept of “will to truth” (Z II, On Self-Overcoming) – as a function of his will to power – the driving force in life. In this configuration, ‘will to truth’ suggests that the ‘error’ to which Nietzsche refers may not be simple naivety. Rather, truth becomes a mechanism for gaining ascendancy, an instrument of will to power, and a territory to be won in the playing out of the passions. In similar vein to Nietzsche’s early interrogation of ‘truth’ (TL), Foucault points out the economic and political role occupied by a ‘regime of truth’. ‘Truth’ is portrayed as “a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133). Technologies for the governance of people depend on the ability to define what constitutes truth and thus to shape how we become subjects with a certain view of ourselves. It is in ‘disciplinary blocks’ (e.g., schools, prisons, hospitals) that ‘power/knowledge’ was developed and comes into existence “according to knowledge which itself has been the product of power” (Marshall, 1996c, p. 115). Within institutions, spatial confinement, restrictive timetables, examinations, classifications, promotions and remedial treatments all serve to establish what would constitute normal behaviour. Statistical forms of knowledge then become the new ‘truth’. Rethinking the human sciences shows how the new regime of truth is institutionalised into our current conception of education. According to Marshall (op. cit.), medicine, law, psychiatry and education penetrate and inform, in the new technologies of self. The outcome of the human sciences is not freedom, but control. The private realm of personal desires are regulated not by the use of the coercive powers of the State, but by the force of public opinion, and by the pressures of civil society and personal conscience. Through psychotherapy, the individual became the subject and the object of its own domination, although ethical modes of self-conduct were encouraged by discipline in the factory, and by surveillance in public places. Although Rose (1991) sees self-regulation as having become the norm, he cites studies carried out in tribal societies where no idea of a unified ‘self’ existed. Persons were not individuated in terms of a unique identity but were acknowledged according to their status and duties within a clan. Individuated personhood was not an inherent feature of humanity. It is argued then that the individual is not an expression of innate truth and goodness, but rather the subject of power relationships, established and nurtured 41

96

Foucault (1974) expresses this as his empirico-transcendental doublet: “…he is a being such that knowledge will be attained in him of what renders all knowledge possible” (p. 318).

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

within the cocoon of a supposedly ‘free’ society. The human senses, far from being windows to the truth via empirical data, are learned and practised within a regime of ‘domination’ legitimised by modern science – a discourse championed by Habermas as “governed by ideals of an objectivity and impartiality secured through unrestricted discussion” (Habermas, 1989, p. 91). However, Poster takes issue with the sham ‘neutrality’ of such ‘unrestricted discussion’: Modern science instantiates the figure of the rational individual; it constitutes the subject of its discourse in a thoroughly Cartesian manner that discounts the value of rhetoric, fiction, and art and invalidates the voices of culturally determined subjects, such as women, who somehow do not have the ‘communicative competence’ to engage in ‘unrestricted discussion’ (Poster, 1989, p. 25). Reasoned use of the human senses then might not be capable of producing much more than existing definitions of human experience. It is proposed here that reason, in its transcendental pretence, is a political tool for achieving the outcome of the ‘rational’ subject in maintenance of a particular ‘regime of truth’. Popper (1969) addresses the issue by adopting a tentative approach to the truth of scientific discovery – a reticence stemming from the lack of any ultimate source of knowledge. His falsifiability thesis proposes achievable truth as tentative “…mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes” (1969, p. 30), built upon a series of conjectures to be refuted or contradicted by observation and reason. Although at its best, such a view of science admits to a degree of uncertainty, the assured way in which the human sciences proceed to the categorisation and subsequent treatment of human subjects belies the speculative nature of what we ‘know’. LYOTARD AND METANARRATIVE

Lyotard takes the critique of reason further. The self-legitimation of scientific rationality as the means by which individuals come to know themselves through the human sciences, is called into question by Lyotard’s “incredulity towards metanarratives” (1984, p. xxiv) in what he calls ‘the postmodern condition’. He introduced the notion of the Differend as a case of conflict that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of an agreed-upon rule of judgement: A case of differend between two parties takes place when the ‘regulation’ of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom (Lyotard, 1988, p. 9). In Lyotard’s analysis, when one of the parties in the debate is scientific rationality itself, there is no possibility of a level playing field. To adopt scientific rationality in judging arguments is to reach a foregone conclusion about the legitimacy of science as a metanarrative. Similarly, the use of reason to judge nonrational entities is a matter of incommensurate discourses at work.

97

CHAPTER 6

Yet in spite of a self-referential logic and without an a priori authority established, the concept of reason – reason that appeals to itself for its own legitimation – becomes the foundation stone for science, for philosophy and for education within the liberal discourse. The defence of reason in this regard usually begins with an assumption of the superiority of that realm and a refusal to acknowledge any dialogue except reason. Siegel (2003), for example, claims the philosophical high ground for reason in that “rationality cannot be coherently rejected” (p. 316). Irrational dialogue is not permitted, while rational dialogue is seen to reinforce the very concept of reason that is to be critiqued. Defence of reason’s high ground usually consists of rational justification, although the circularity in such self-referential logic is not often seen as problematic. Lyotard’s (1984) report on knowledge in technologised societies has a major impact on liberal-humanist assumptions about knowledge, not only in what counts as knowledge, but also its status, its availability and its modes of transmission. According to Lyotard, knowledge is increasingly defined by the metanarrative of science and technology. Through technology, knowledge is commodified, commercialised and exchangeable, and underpins narrow definitions of societal relationships, such as ‘information society’ (Bell, 1973), ‘post-industrial society’ (Masuda, 1981), the ‘mode of information’ (Poster, 1990) and the more recent ‘knowledge economy’ (Stiglitz, 1999). The last of these terms metamorphosed during recent education reforms in New Zealand into a more acceptable sounding (but still ‘third way’) ‘knowledge economy and society’ (Ministry of Education, 2002). Against the ‘grand narrative’, Lyotard champions the cause of the ‘little narrative’ – essentially the narrative of individual human beings without the need for foundational justification apart from correcting abuses of individual freedoms (Sim, 1998). At the empirical level, Michael Peters (1996) interrogates scientific rationality and the whole Enlightenment project in his interpretation of the Nazi Germany phenomenon labelled after Auschwitz. It was the scientific discourse that not only legitimated the final solution itself, but also after the holocaust, dictated what research was allowable into the history of racism and National Socialism. The possibility and the existence of Auschwitz, Peters argues, spells out the “liquidation of the project of modernity” (1996, p. 117). Contra Kant and Hegel, he argues that universal history does not move inevitably toward the better, and that history does not have universal finality. Consequently, it appears that reason as a grand narrative would have to divorce itself from its practical outcomes to achieve moral legitimation as grand narrative or guiding principle in the direction of western society. However, the poststructuralists do not dispute some elements of reason in liberal culture. What they dispute is “the lens that discerns ‘reason’ in law and democracy, but not in gas chambers and atom bombs” (Poster, 1989, p. 22). The atrocity that was Auschwitz means that reason cannot be sustained as the sole basis of the dignity and worth of the individual, for the holocaust (as a rational project) was the abandonment of human values and rights. It would be difficult to find a moral defence for any development that meant the extermination of millions of people in a systematically planned fashion. Such a programme is more in keeping with the blind efficiency of

98

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

technology than with the respectful morality of humanism. And yet the programme emanated from the very reason underpinning the humanist tradition and the project of modernity in which the advance of reason signalled progress. DERRIDA AND LINGUISTIC DECONSTRUCTION

The focus on literature and the arts as the expression of an underlying human subject is seriously undermined not only by the multiple current interpretations of that expression, but also by the changing context of language over time. In strong contrast to the humanist reliance on reason as fundamental, Derrida (1978) uses Saussure’s language of signs to interrogate the notion of the centre, introducing the notion of play to describe the possibility of an alternative conceptualisation of structure. He offers two interpretations of play, one seeking to decipher the truth or origin that temporarily escapes interpretation, the other as “Nietzschean affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth and without origin” (Derrida, 1978, p. 292). The first interpretation operates within the metaphor of science, as the process of investigation in the preliminary and preparatory ground for an eventual yielding up of truth. The second interpretation would be akin to continuous investigation, no final discovery and every ‘truth’ tentative. He suggests that the two interpretations are irreconcilable, even though they share the territory of the social sciences. Instead of there being an underlying truth or rationalism as a basis for social reality, Derrida’s position enables many interpretations of the text. Western culture has tended to assume that speech is a clear and direct way to communicate. Drawing on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Derrida questions this assumption, and challenges the idea that text is imbued with unchanging, unified meaning. As a result, the author’s intentions in speaking and/or writing cannot be unconditionally accepted or assumed. Sturrock (1986) argues that even the author is in fact a construct, or hypothesis, formed by a reader on the evidence of his or her reading: “The process by which authors are constructed is circular: we abstract them from the Texts and then use this abstraction to explain the Texts” (p. 154). This is not to doubt the original flesh and blood existence of a writer, but to deny privileged access to the internal motivations and intentions of that historical person. To claim such privileged access is to fall victim to Nietzsche’s ‘error of false causality’: Man … posited ‘things’ as possessing being according to his own image, according to his concept of the ego as cause. No wonder he later always discovered in things only that which he had put into them! … the concept ‘thing’ is merely a reflection of the belief in the ego as cause (TI, The Four Great Errors §3). Constructivist approaches to literature explore the relationship between reading and writing processes, suggesting that readers transform texts written by others as they build their own meanings, and that an imaginary intended reader is an integral part of the authoring process (Spivey, 1997). Nietzsche’s practice of rewriting prefaces to new editions at a later date and of conducting post facto critiques of his

99

CHAPTER 6

earlier works42 included renunciation of convictions held earlier, suggesting that an original author is not even a stable centre of meaning to himself, but more like a text that changes over time. It is debatable, therefore, whether ‘author-ity’ should be located either in the original authoring or in the later interpretation, even where the original author becomes the interpreter at a later date. Derrida treats the author as a construct and so the number of legitimate interpretations of a text is not limited. While there may be some discursive rules for interpretation and therefore some interpretations better than others, the process of de-origination of the author negates the essential quality of the text. This means that neither the text nor the author is available as a source of universal norms to underpin the humanist concept of a practical wisdom. Education’s quest to promote the search for meaning becomes itself meaningless. There is a danger of philosophical nihilism here since Derrida’s deconstruction can also be applied to the nature of philosophical investigation. In a world of multiple interpretations, philosophy cannot assume the guise of a meta-level mode of inquiry – in other words, it may not be that philosophy has not yet found the truth; there may be no truth to be found. This is not to say that philosophical investigation has no worth. Rather, such inquiry amplifies Lyotard’s scepticism of metanarratives, treating all such investigation as respectful in its approach and tentative in its outcomes. Marshall & Peters (1994) take the Derridean deconstruction of language further than a suspicion of philosophical method, arguing that the interpretation of language is also problematic for science. Science, they say, becomes incapable of legitimating other language games, but also incapable of legitimating itself. Increasingly, they say, Science has fallen under the sway of another game, technology whose goal is not truth but optimal performance and whose criteria are minimising input and maximising output rather than (the liberal humanist notions of) truth or justice (Marshall & Peters, 1994, p. 4640). ‘SELF’ AS MULTIPLICITY AND CREATION

The poststructural critique of the subject was foreshadowed by Nietzsche in his rejection of the liberal ‘self’ as a Christian teaching, – a position he called a soul atomism – a belief which regards the soul as being something “indestructible, eternal, indivisible as a monad, as an atomon” (BGE §12). This belief, he asserts, ought to be ejected from science. As alternative conceptions of the soul, Nietzsche goes on to claim civic rights for the idea of the ‘mortal soul’, the ‘soul as multiplicity of the subject’ and the ‘soul as social structure of the drives and emotions’. 42

Nietzsche added a preface entitled “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” to his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (BT) some fifteen years after its original publication, in which he tried to relocate the book inside morality rather than in its original explicit focus on the redemption of life through art. Between 1886 and 1888, changes were also made to Human, All Too Human (HAH), Daybreak (DB), and The Gay Science (GS). Written in 1888, his Ecce Homo (EH) was a thoroughgoing critique of many of his earlier works.

100

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

This sub-rational aspect was later developed by Freud and Jung as psychoanalytic theory, providing an arena for multiple personalities, subpersonalities, and various drives and complexes within the psychic personality. Both Freud and Jung worked with dreams, and with patients suffering psychoses, neuroses and schizophrenia. The idea of a multiplicity of ‘selves’ or subject positions was compatible with theories of the unconscious, although Freud (1932) saw the function of psychoanalysis as a rational project of ‘strengthening the ego’, to establish more control over the instinctual drives. In Freudian terms, the ego is the medium for rationally interpreting the external world and controlling the instinctual drives of the id. Freud saw the ego as standing for reason and good sense while the id represented the untamed passions. For Freud, the ego is gradually developed as the infant interacts with the external social world. Lacan (1977) too, in his work with the ‘mirror’ stage of human development, shows how the child’s distinction between self and other is a result of the recognition of the social. The idea of incorporating ‘the other’ into the psyche identifies the self as a composite social construction. Given that the child interacts with many others through its development, it is easy to conceptualise the self as composed in large part of others – each person as many persons. There are similarities between Nietzsche’s ‘higher men’ (Z IV, On the Higher Man) in their critical, only half-successful overcoming of a sick ‘mob’ morality, and Freud’s (1932) super-ego which features a critical, moral agency as an antithesis to the instinctual drives of the individual. Nietzsche’s Übermensch shares some features too with Freud’s ‘ego’, as both attempt to reconcile competing forces, the former working with Apollonian order and Dionysian frenzy, the latter with the tempestuous forces of the id and the moralising of the super-ego. But in contrast to Freud who has the process as unconscious, Nietzsche contends that we can shape our ideals by freely choosing our educators and exemplary figures. Thus, Nietzsche’s imperative throughout his writings to ‘become who you are’ is not about the emergence of an existing a priori essence, nor to achieving a finite potential, but to the ongoing process of creation and re-creation of one’s existence. The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? (WP §490). As a means of conceptualising the self as a multiplicity, Parkes (1989) offers the metaphor of the theatre, with the self as a cast of many, one actor after another taking charge for as long as a particular play is working. He suggests the idea of a dramatic pluralism, and in keeping with Nietzschean thought, refers to “a sort of thespian equivalent of a dynamic aristocracy of talent ... not one immortal soul, but many mortal souls” (Parkes, 1989, p. 468). Extending Parkes’ metaphor, a few interesting analogies can be drawn between theatrical drama, and the socially constructed self able to adopt multiple subject positions. Like the self, the theatre is a particular social construct, located historically and bound by certain rules of existence. Without an audience or a

101

CHAPTER 6

script, there can be no drama, and the audience participation and feedback shapes the performance and the responses of the actors. The actors themselves don different masks to switch between character parts, and their stage roles sometimes merge with what they believe is their ‘real’ life. Critics are experts presumed to know what constitutes a credible performance, their pronouncements often determining whether a production should continue or whether it should be consigned to the scrap heap as worthless. Various mood swings and changes of pace are evoked by the script in a stage production. The author and/or scriptwriters are responsible for setting the parameters for the story, and actors are expected to play out their individual roles while always contributing to the communal whole. The prima donna is the exception rather than the rule, and the actors, producers, ticket sellers, ushers and the support team all operate by agreed rules, each role recognisable by its characteristic patterns of behaviour. As Shakespeare’s As You Like It character, Jaques, mused – ‘All the World’s a Stage’. The self is also a particular social construct, located historically and bound by certain rules of existence. The self takes on a role (arguably an identity), which is shaped and patterned by a complex set of social interactions from birth (or earlier). With no social audience or troupe of fellow actors, the self would be a lost soul, and there are experts – “‘psy’-specialists”43 (Donzelot, 1979, p. 229) who decide whether certain self-configurations are acceptable for social participation. Socialisation and education ensure that particular scripts are learned, schooling ensures adequate performance, while the stage crew of the liberal state ensures the policing of economic stability for the production of the drama of the self. Individual labels, role categories, and standards of moral behaviour ensure that at any time the self is following the right script and implicated in bringing its character to life, all the while contributing to the good of the communal whole. As the means of self-direction, the rational ego is charged with control, so at all times the self is constrained within acceptable, recognizable and (always) reasonable limits. Continuing the metaphor of the stage play, the rational ego is but one player, whose justification for assuming dominance is, by definition, rational, and therefore self-referential. This is not an argument for abolishing the rational ego altogether, as it has an important place in the drama. Rather, a Nietzschean perspective might acknowledge the utility provided by reason, but at the same time challenge its appropriation of the auditioning and directing role, its decisionmaking over what will constitute the script, and its constant upstaging of the other characters. Nietzsche’s perspectivism leaves no coherent script, no single direction 43

Donzelot includes in this group those practising psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychopedagogy. The ‘psy’-specialists are charged with shaping subjectivity at the intersection of society and family. Unlike the priest who is handicapped by being riveted to his defence of moral values, and unlike the doctor who operates within restricted operational codes, the ‘psy’ specialist is, according to Donzelot, a specialist in indecision, furnishing a neutral terrain for the resolution of differences of regime between the management of bodies and the management of populations, [their discourse allowing them to] circumscribe this position, to mark out its circuits and block its exits (Donzelot, 1997, pp. 229-230).

102

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

to be provided by the character of reason, no prompting from fundamental rules, and no cue cards or definitive ‘author-ity’ in transcendental truth. How then is the dramatic production to be constituted? How might some of the character parts be conceived? And what parameters might constrain such a production, in applying the metaphor to a direction for the philosophy of education? Nietzsche advocates self-overcoming as the path towards the Übermensch and genuine culture. Hillesheim prefers the translation ‘self surpassing’ and refers to the Greek agon as a public contest to provide a model for individual living. The agonistic contest does not involve progress through Hegel’s negation or annihilation of the ‘other’, nor is it akin to the mournful suffering of the Christian agony as the path to heavenly salvation. Suffering is reconstituted as an energetic approach to life, as reconciliation and the creation of a higher self, and welcomed as necessary for strengthening of the spirit in this earthly life. Man should turn the concept inward: to apply it to the theatre of the mind and heart, to convert it into a universal principle of individual creativity. It is the contest waged within one’s own psyche, the confrontation of images, ideas, values and emotions, that provides the necessary fuel or energy for the dynamic process of self surpassing (Hillesheim, 1986, p. 173). The idea of contest and reconciliation is not foreign to Nietzsche’s thought. Higgins (1988) describes the significance of the Dionysian and the Apollonian views of life, and the Nietzschean idea of a healthy life as the integration of both the Apollonian and the Dionysian perspectives. The Dionysian offers a portrait of life as a passionate and tumultuous flux that has no ultimate respect for anything individual or orderly. In contrast, the Apollonian perspective of reality is orderly, graspable and beautiful. Nietzsche’s view was that Greek tragedy managed such a reconciliation by embracing the irrational (Higgins, 1988, p. 137). Cooper’s (1983a) examination of Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to education warns against the reification involved in treating the self as an a priori essence, and suggests instead a notion of ‘authenticity’ that focuses not on individual essence, but on what it is to be human. He argues that the command ‘Be what you are!’ implies that we should live as the kind of beings we really are – ones distinguished, that is, by the capacity for self-concern. This, he suggests, is not a reference to ‘true selves’ but to how people should live self-creating lives. Nehamas (1985) contributes significantly to the ‘creative’ story, portraying life as literature. His analysis of Nietzsche’s writing depicts life as continuous creation and characterisation, emphasising the flow of the text rather than the cultivation of stable and predictable character traits. Like Deleuze, he believes that Nietzsche does not think of the self as a state of being that follows and replaces an earlier process of becoming. Nietzsche indeed is adamant that human action is not a result of preconceived human intention: “There is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything” (GM 1 §13). Rather, he sees it as a continual process of integrating one’s thoughts, desires, and actions. It is a matter of accepting responsibility for everything that

103

CHAPTER 6

we have done, and realising that everything that we have done actually constitutes who each one of us is. To be who one is, we can now see, is to be engaged in a constantly continuing and continually broadening process of appropriation of one’s experiences and actions, of enlarging the capacity for assuming responsibility for oneself (Nehamas, 1985, p. 191). Indicative of the idea of ‘self’ as multiplicity, Nietzsche’s frequent reference to theatrical masks signifies not a real actor in disguise, but variously – an expected social performance (GS §365), a comfort for the socially ‘refined’ (BGE §270), the preservation of a reflective space for profound spirits (BGE §40), a healthy craving for a role in life (GS §361), a place to hide from critics (BGE §25), a publicly acceptable form of appearance for the terror of true philosophy (GM III §10), and a placeholder for further masks to come (BGE §289). Nietzschean philosophy refuses the search for origins or exact essences, characterising such a search as “the removal of every mask to ultimately disclose an original identity” (Foucault, 1984d, p. 78). Instead, the world is seen as ‘accident and succession’ in a world not of ultimate origin, but of continuous concealing and revealing: If the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics, if he listens to history, he finds that there is ‘something altogether different’ behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms (Foucault, 1984d, p. 78). With ‘untruth’ as a ‘condition of life’ (BGE §4), Nietzsche posits a more comprehensive world behind every surface – “an abyss behind every ground, beneath every ‘foundation’” (BGE §289), claiming that the point at which a philosopher stops is merely arbitrary and does not signal any ‘final and real’ opinions at all: “Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding-place, every word also a mask” (BGE §289). In other words, ‘identity’ or ‘truth’ is merely the next mask in succession, beneath which there are yet more masks. Rather than commiserate over lost origins, Foucault suggests that the new historian, the genealogist, will enjoy the masquerade of constantly reappearing masks – genealogy as “history in the form of a concerted carnival” (Foucault, 1984d, p. 94). EDUCATION AS CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT

In view of the challenges presented above, education cannot uncritically assume the inevitability or the value of universal reason either as its goal or as its mechanism. Nor can it promote unproblematically a stable subject of reason against a life of multiplicity and theatrical creation. The human sciences, based on rationality and sense perceptions, are not a source of certainty. The liberal disciplines are predicated on reason which itself is called into question. In examining the implications of such a critique for education, a problem arises in

104

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

acknowledging that philosophical analysis itself has no inherent access to ‘the truth’, so no meta-solution can be found there. Education becomes a critical and constructive engagement with the world rather than representing inexorable progress or positivistic discovery of transcendental truth. To deconstruct the rationality behind the subject of humanism is to render the problem for education as a search for meaning, for which there can be no justifiable solution within the liberal discourse. Nor, according to Young’s (2003) rejection of Derrida, can we find a meaningful existence in the process of deconstruction itself, since one’s personal narrative retains its power only to the extent that it resists deconstruction. However, Nietzsche’s ‘death of god’ does not signal the end of all possibility, and Derrida does not want to do away with the subject entirely: I believe that at a certain level both of experience and of philosophical and scientific discourse, one cannot get along without the notion of the subject. It is a question of knowing where it comes from and how it functions (Derrida, 1970, p. 271). Within a Derridean deconstruction or after Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’, future direction cannot be predicated in Enlightenment notions of progress, or the betterment of the human condition. It must instead treat every step we take as a beginning or as a pragmatic “rearrangement of the maze that we coinhabit together” (Kiziltan et al., 1990, p. 369). Temporary respite is found in Foucault’s refusal to accept the ‘blackmail of the Enlightenment’ as a privileged position for analysis, and his “permanent reactivating of an attitude – that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 42). Rather than negating the modernist concern with public life and critical rationality, Giroux (1988) steps out from his Marxist perspective in advocating a version of postmodern engagement – with foundationalism, culture, difference and subjectivity; to provide the basis for questioning the modernist ideal of the good life. Rather than celebrate the narratives of the masters, he says, educators might engage with postmodernism to question how narratives get constructed, how they represent particular epistemological and political views of the world, and how they operate to regulate moral and social experience: Postmodernism attempts to delineate how borders are named, it attempts to redraw the very maps of meaning, desire, and difference, it inscribes the social and individual body with new intellectual and emotional investments, and it calls into question traditional forms of power and its accompanying modes of legitimation (Giroux, 1988, p. 25). A recent educational journal focussing on critical pedagogy and race theories features the expected Marxist calls for resistance to various forms of marginalisation and oppression through class struggle and fundamental change in the relations of production (e.g., Allen, 2004; Scatamburlo-D’Annibale & McLaren, 2004). Within such analyses, poststructural accounts of difference are vilified as an ‘ideas marketplace’ where all vendors display their different cultural

105

CHAPTER 6

goods – “a posture which reinscribes a neo-liberal pluralist stance rooted in the ideology of free-market capitalism” (Scatamburlo-D’Annibale & McLaren, 2004, p. 186). The accusation is that the seemingly radical discursive manoeuvres amount to little more than “academics striking radical poses in the seminar rooms” (ibid. 193) while doing nothing to further the struggles against oppression and exploitation that occur in the material world. However, those same authors are as guilty as their targets of attempting to reach an academic audience in the hope of raising a consciousness that prepares the ground for subjective change, and headon confrontation or violence has not proven to be a way forward for the longrunning Marxist critique of capitalism. A less militant posture in the same journal is that the challenge for education is to construct a pragmatic process of ‘meaningful, reciprocal communication’ that would help us reconnect our emotional and ethical investments with our work, our students and each other; and for a ‘deepening investment in community’: a sense of community that must be built from the charred remains of modernization and colonization. We will build this community by re-infusing difference, plurality, heterogeneity, and intellectual problematization into the daily lives of our school children and into our lives as brokers of cultural knowledge and social change (McCarthy & Dimitriadis, 2004, p. 212). Giroux, too, finds considerable appeal in the postmodern concern with diversity, contingency and cultural pluralism, but is not prepared to abandon his defence of the modernist notion of public life or the struggle for equality and liberty at the heart of liberal democracy. Advocating a ‘radical democracy’, he argues for ‘engaged plurality’ and ‘critical citizenship’ – as much a political as it is a pedagogical project, and one that calls for educators to combine democratic public philosophy with a “postmodern theory of resistance” (op. cit., p. 27). Such proposals are still likely to be policed within Western society, however, since their political focus admits to the desire for radical change. Conversely, conservative solutions are likely to be framed in traditional language and involve a mere revamping of the same assumptions upon which the liberal institutions have been based. Swift ideological change is therefore unlikely without the imposition of the kind of violence historically associated with paradigm shifts in political realities44. Because the process of self-creation is a continuous narrative, the philosophy of education cannot produce a finished script. However, advocating an eclectic approach, Aviram (1991) asserts that Nietzsche never intended to supply us with a systematic philosophical resolution of all life’s riddles, and that in Nietzschean spirit, we should use modern theories to provide a productive framework of thought about what would constitute the desired individual. The critical engagement for education then, is not a simple choice between Marxist revolution and postmodern marketplace. The importance of Nietzsche’s critique lies not in dismantling the whole project of education, but in 44

Examples include Machiavelli’s 16th century advice to the prince (1993, p. 68); the early colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand by the British, for which the New Zealand Government is currently making large financial settlements by way of apology; and the ‘war on terror’ as the metaphor for the imposition of democratic government on the people of Iraq.

106

NIETZSCHE, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND EDUCATION

problematising the nature of the relationship between the self and society, in questioning the governing role played by reason in the development of social selves, and in interrogating the political structures that are charged with maintaining the current order. Translated into educational thinking, that might entail a de-emphasis on scientific rationality and a greater emphasis on a deconstructive genealogy of the social and cultural milieu in which the self and society define each other. Such a project is the development of Nietzsche’s Übermensch.

107

CHAPTER 7

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

NIETZSCHE AND FOUCAULT

It was argued in chapter four that the system of Kantian ethics relies on a notion of autonomy made possible by the Christian heritage of a transcendental goodness, and its personification in the human capacity for rational thought. Although Kant posited a system of morality outside of religious faith, Nietzsche was concerned that the “shadows of God” (GS §109) still persist in the transcendental world of Kantian reason. He refused to accept reason as the basis of human dignity in his condemnation of Christian morality as a “holy lie” (AC §36). This chapter argues that the contingent nature of ‘being’ and the idea of life as continuous creation negate modernist notions of the self as real, as transcendental or as universal. In the face of such negation, Kantian autonomy is insufficient as an ethical base, and is explored here in relation to the Nietzschean subject, referring in particular to Foucault’s notions of ‘governmentality’ and ‘subjectivity’, locating the modern self firmly within the rationality of government. It would be difficult to portray subjectivity as a Nietzschean project without acknowledging both Foucault’s interpretation and his development of Nietzsche’s ideas in this area. The links between Foucault and Nietzsche, extending over a range of themes, are well documented by others45 and acknowledged by Foucault, not least in his 1974 lecture on the formation of the ‘subject’ of knowledge: It would have been possible, and perhaps more honest, to cite only one name, that of Nietzsche, because what I say here won’t mean anything if it isn’t connected to Nietzsche’s work, which seems to me to be the best, the most effective, the most pertinent of the models that one can draw upon (Foucault, 2001a, p. 5). Before delving into the question of subjectivity, however, it is helpful to highlight some similarities between the two thinkers so as to appreciate the extent to which Foucault might be considered ‘Nietzschean’, and to appreciate the power of Nietzsche’s thought in its subsequent development at the hands of Foucault. Foucault was quick to avoid being associated with any particular intellectual tradition or philosophical category, sidestepping such labels as “anarchist, leftist, ostentatious or disguised Marxist, nihilist, explicit or secret anti-Marxist, technocrat in service of Gaullism, new liberal…etc.” (Foucault, 1984b, p. 383). He also denied being “a phenomenologist or a structuralist” (Foucault, 1997a, p. 125); 45

See, for example: Mahon, 1992; McKerrow, 2000; Megill, 1987; Schrift, 1995 & 2000; Shapiro 2003; Stauth & Turner 1988.

108

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

and similarly “a Freudian, a Marxist, a structuralist, or an analytic philosopher” (Mahon, 1992, p. 180). It is significant then, when Foucault refers in an interview to his own ‘fundamental Nietzscheanism’, declaring baldly, “I am simply a Nietzschean” (Foucault, 1996, p. 471). Stauth & Turner (1988) trace Foucault’s philosophical style back to Nietzsche, particularly his use of genealogy and archaeology, along with his alternative epistemological views on science, philosophy and art. The use of genealogy, a technology shared by both philosophers – although Foucault’s use focussed on more specific events – reveals new perspectives on the present and the past and is a means to “sacrifice what we consider as ‘knowledge’” (Shapiro, 2003, p. 290), linking it firmly to the discourse of power. Foucault’s ‘archaeology’ of knowledge has been described as “Nietzsche-inspired” (Mahon, 1992, p. 16) with Nietzsche’s attack on the Cartesian subject underpinning Foucault’s (1984c) critique of the integrity of ‘the author’, revealing the originating subject as a function of discursive rules. Opened up instead, in the space vacated by Nietzsche’s death of God, is the possibility, not of replacement, but of reinterpretation and new creation: “We must locate the space left empty by the author’s disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches and watch for the openings that this disappearance uncovers” (Foucault, 1984c, p. 105). In similar vein to Nietzsche’s early essay depicting truth as “the duty to lie according to fixed convention” for the purpose of social preservation (TL §1), Foucault points out the economic and political role occupied by a ‘regime of truth’; ‘truth’ being portrayed as “a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133). The critique of foundational truth is explored more fully later in this book within a discussion of poststructural thought, but is mentioned here as another similarity between the two philosophers. Foucault’s acknowledgement of Nietzsche as the “philosopher of power” (Foucault, 1980, p. 53) masks his own focus on power relations. In spite of Foucault’s claim to be “an experimenter and not a theorist” (2001b, p. 240), he too has been identified as a “theorist of power” (Shapiro, 2003, p. 391), relying on the idea of resistance for his notion of freedom and drawing inspiration from Nietzsche’s linkage between power, truth and knowledge. Schrift (1995) argues additionally that the impact of Nietzsche’s thinking on power retains much of its currency largely through Foucault’s own works (p. 34). Thus a focus on Nietzschean subjectivity is enriched by the inclusion of Foucault’s perspective. Some caution is wise however, since Foucault admits to feeling at liberty to take Nietzsche’s thought, “to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and protest” (Foucault, 1980, p. 54) without too much concern about being unfaithful to his predecessor. Such interpretation may of course be considered precisely Nietzschean in the working out of Zarathustra’s warning that “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §3). Other similar themes emerge in Nietzsche and Foucault too. Nietzsche’s appreciation of certainty as mere illusion after the death of God is mirrored in Foucault’s (1980) perspective on ‘power/knowledge’ and his suspicion towards the

109

CHAPTER 7

human sciences. Foucault’s (1977) exposition of disciplinary knowledge in the emergence of the human sciences is evocative of Nietzsche’s discussion of punishment in the second essay of the Genealogy. Both thinkers share a normative commitment to life as an aesthetic phenomenon46, with a focus on visual images and dreams as a work of art (Shapiro, 2003, p. 204). Both Nietzsche and Foucault reject any totalising or normalising trend in favour of difference – Foucault through the operation of freedom and Nietzsche through his Übermensch. In dealing with nihilism too, both philosophers adopt an affirmative stance in their cultural critique of “a derelict present, of a nothing out of which everything must be created” (Megill, 1987, p. 183). In addition, both thinkers are committed to a radical scepticism about teleological progress, and the division between the real and the apparent (Mahon, 1992). Foucault’s ideas are used, then, to enhance and clarify a Nietzschean perspective on human ‘becoming’ (as opposed to ‘being’), highlighting subsequent development of Nietzsche’s thought in working with the forces that come into play in the development of subjectivity. GENEALOGY

Foucault paid an explicit debt of gratitude to Nietzsche for what became an important investigative style known as ‘genealogy’ – a style which problematised truth as intimately entwined with relations of power, and suggested different interpretations of the origins of our taken-for-granted values and concepts. In his article Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, Foucault (1984d) suggests our ‘knowledge’ of the essence of things may arise from mere accidents, errors, false appraisals or faulty calculations. He distinguishes between the notion of ‘origin’ as a search for essence (Ursprung), and as a descent from ‘numberless beginnings’ (Herkunft). A focus on the latter does not need a single origin, but offers many threads of explanation so that in the end, no particular explanation is privileged.47 An unpublished note from Nietzsche claims that what is needed above all is “an absolute skepticism toward all inherited concepts” (WP §409). The genealogist, for both Nietzsche and Foucault, locates the ‘origins’ of these concepts and values in the cultural practices and conditions from which they emerged: “Both Nietzsche and Foucault, then, are committed to genealogical critique, the attempt to reveal the historical context of events, their historical conditions of existence. Both seek to reveal the unquestioned premises of a culture, the practical background from which events and the entities of our experience emerge. Genealogy for both is a quest for ‘origins,’ but both assume that no thing is to be found at the origin; there is no original or transcendental signified. Any thing, person, event is construed to be a matter 46 47

BT, Attempt at a Self Criticism §2 In the manner of genealogical investigation, Foucault (1975) provides an excellent example of multiple possibilities in the various accounts of a murder, for which there are many competing stories, but no way to know the ‘truth’. In the end all the reader is left with are multiple beliefs about what may have happened.

110

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

of historical, cultural, practical interpretation, and beneath the series of interpretations there is no thing” (Mahon, 1992, p. 125). Chapter five earlier proposed three distinct, but interdependent, modes of criticism within Nietzschean genealogy: logical criticism, genetic criticism and functional criticism (Warren, 1988). Foucault, in a 1983 interview, had also raised the possibility of three domains of genealogy: First, an historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, an historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, an historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents” (Foucault, 1997b, p. 262). In laying out what is meant by his style of genealogy, Foucault emphasises the local character of criticism, rather than a global or totalitarian perspective dependent on established regimes of thought. What is argued for is the insurrection of “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 1980, p. 81) – those knowledges that, on the one hand, may have been disguised by prevalent theory, and on the other hand, those that may have been disqualified through being inadequately elaborated or insufficiently scientific. In this latter group, Foucault includes knowledges of the psychiatric patient, of the ill person, of the nurse, of the doctor (as distinct from medical discourse), and of the delinquent. It is the reappearance of these ‘subjugated knowledges’ that challenges ‘scientific’48 claims to a unitary body of theory that would filter and hierarchise experience in the name of some ‘true’ knowledge, and explains Foucault’s definition of genealogy: “Let us give the term genealogy to the union of erudite knowledge and local memories which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically today” (ibid., p. 83). Genealogy, then, does not signal a search for a more exact form of science, subject to a particular hierarchy of procedures. Rather, Foucault argues, genealogy should be seen as an ‘anti-science’: [an] attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from that subjection, to render them … capable of opposition and of struggle against the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientific discourse (Foucault, 1980, p. 84). It is important to emphasise the power of genealogy as a technique to question the traditional teleology of ultimate origins and essential truths. Foucault’s genealogy is, thus, a Nietzschean form of critique, in that it “denies any foundational assumptions about our nature … and … reveals the contingency, even arbitrariness, of what appears natural and necessary, and thereby it serves to open 48

The term ‘scientific’ is used here to signify the use of empirical techniques to authorise particular definitions of human activity, and thereby limiting future possibilities. The scare quotes indicate recognition that not all approaches to science function in this way – in particular the work of Bachelard, Canguilhelm, Kuhn and Popper, who undermine the positivism of much scientific endeavour and whose work allows for the kind of historical challenge that Foucault undertakes.

111

CHAPTER 7

possibilities” (Mahon, 1992, p. 14). Working from the present, genealogy can unravel a variety of competing histories and thus suggest various possible interpretations of the present and the future, without searching for ultimate truth. Whereas Foucault’s genealogical technique focussed on specific historical events49, Nietzsche’s genealogical approach was a much broader brush-sweep. His On the Genealogy of Morals is an interrogation of Christian values, arising as “a new knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed .... a knowledge of a kind that has never yet existed or even been desired” (GM preface §6). It might be added: ‘or will ever be accepted’, considering that his genealogy exposes justice as evolving from an economic model of debt based on guilt, and his portrayal of morality as being developed through the intentional use of torture, sacrifices and mutilation. What follows here, then, is a genealogical examination of the notion of personal autonomy as the basis for a system of ethics. It examines the philosophical assumptions underlying various conceptions of autonomy, and presents a brief etymology of the term ‘autonomy’. This analysis shows that the Enlightenment (and in particular, Kant’s) notion of ‘personal autonomy’ is incompatible with Nietzsche’s belief that the self is under continuous creation. It also provides the basis for arguing that ‘truth’ is enmeshed in the discourse of power and that the continuous creation of ‘self’ is not an unbounded enterprise. AUTONOMY

Following Kant’s prescription, a moral philosopher might argue that autonomous persons are those who have attained the highest stage of moral thought and judgment, guided by “universal ethical principles that all humanity should follow” (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 412). Autonomous persons are said to be in charge of their own lives, because they can determine for themselves, especially with the help of reason the nature and content of their beliefs, attitudes and emotions, and the purposes and nature of their actions. In being a person of this kind one is freed from the dogma and/or authority of others – one is independent. “Hence the freeing of people through education has often been interpreted as positing personal autonomy (often rational autonomy) as an aim, if not the aim, of education” (Peters & Marshall, 1996, p. 86). Lankshear (1982, p. 96) points out the multiplicity of meanings associated with the idea of ‘autonomy’. While it might denote a stage in adolescent cognitive development, the term is also used to refer to a two-year-old child’s toilet habits. It is also used variously as a synonym for such notions as ‘independence’, a ‘sense of agency’, ‘individuality’, and the process of ‘deciding for oneself’. The vagueness of such ordinary language usage, however, is inadequate as an ethical base, and is too limited to underpin universal liberal education or for the public funding of a national education system. 49

Foucault’s (1977) genealogy of punishment begins with a specific description of the torture, execution and burning of the regicide, Damiens, down to the last detail including how long the pieces to flesh took to burn.

112

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

One version of personal autonomy, compatible with a liberal educational ideal, is embedded firmly in the rationalist Kantian tradition, and involves the attempt to give an “ethical embodiment to the idea of being independent or self-governing” (Lankshear, 1982, p. 97). Barrow (1975, p. 138) argues that an autonomous person must think authentically, but must also “think well”, although there are difficulties in determining what criteria might be used to determine how ‘well’ such thinking might be, since the kind of reasoning that characterises Kant’s autonomous person (moral reasoning) is the same kind of reasoning that underpins a judgment about whether that thinking is morally sound. Thus a requirement to ‘think well’ is, at best, a recipe for propagation of Kantian morality, and at worst, self-referential. It is possible to conceive of other versions of autonomy that do not involve moral thought and action. One such position is predicated on the existentialist notion that existence precedes essence. ‘Authentic’ choices cannot be explained by moral law or by determination of human nature. Man, rather than appealing to some ethic or formula outside himself as a guide for action, is faced with spontaneity of choice, for which he bears an “unavoidable responsibility” (Sartre, 1948, p. 37). To act in accordance with some universal laws or principles per se, would be to act inauthentically, so in this account, there is no criterion against which to judge the morality of thought or action. Dearden uses the work of Hare, Sartre and Popper, in developing a thesis about autonomy, its purpose being “to show that our actions are in no way constrained by inclinations, customary social practices, role-expectations, authorities, gods, human nature or mindless processes. We choose or decide to act in the way we do” (Dearden, 1968, p. 154). For Dearden, there is no necessary connection between autonomy and morality, although he does have the autonomous person as rational. Whereas both Dearden and Barrow insist that autonomy relies on reason, other views suggest that the autonomic needs more than just a minimal sense of being coherent and consistent. Walker (1976), for example, argues for a view of autonomy that encompasses desire and feeling rather than being subject to reason. Autonomy in this sense is not dependent on, nor limited to, morality or even rationality. Concepts such as needs, drives and appetites inhere in the idea of human nature as lying beyond the scope of the rational. This extended sense of autonomy is more in keeping with Nietzsche’s aesthetic interpretation of humanity as a more adequate basis for human action than the categorical imperative and the sense of moral duty put forward by Kant. Examining the etymology of the term ‘autonomy’ reveals the implied dualistic relationship between a self (autos) and some system of law (nomos). Lankshear (1982) conceives of the autos as the ownership or authenticity condition of autonomy, and the nomos as some code, body of criteria, or set of standards in accordance with which individuals regulate their theoretical and practical activities. There are several logical possibilities for the relationship between autos and nomos. First, the autos may make the law and act (or not) accordingly. The degree to which thought and action correspond with rational or moral law is often considered to be the degree to which the individual is autonomous. Second, the autos may take on others’ law and act (or not) accordingly. Distinct from the autonomic, this person is considered to be heteronomous. Third, the autos may act

113

CHAPTER 7

independently without recourse to any law, typified below in the description of the ‘anomic’ individual. Finally, as critics of modernity would have it, the autos may have been constituted and/or contaminated by the law and so may not function independently. According to Benn, (cited in Lankshear, 1982) the nomos of the autonomic is her own based on “a still-continuing process of criticism and re-evaluation” on the part of the individual. A defining characteristic of Benn’s autonomous person is that (s)he is prepared to evaluate through rational reflection, the beliefs, rules and values that form the basis for thought and action, meaning only a rational person can be defined as autonomous. To satisfy Benn’s ownership or authenticity condition of autonomy, the beliefs, thought, tastes and actions of the autonomous person must also be her own. The idea that a nomos based on rationality can be evaluated by reference to that same rationality as the basis for a reflective process is somewhat circular to say the least, but this appears to present no problem to the defenders of a rational autonomy. This criticism is one of the major planks of poststructural critique and an important part of Nietzsche’s corpus. In Kantian fashion, Richard Peters (1966) bases the idea of ‘autonomy’ on the ability and determination to regulate one’s life by rules which one has accepted for oneself. He advocates ‘predictability’ in a ‘stable condition of order’ with ‘determinate sanctions’, and suggests that autonomy is unlikely to develop if young people are “pitchforked into an anarchic situation in which they are told that they have to decide everything for themselves” (p. 198). Relevant to the discussion at hand is his ‘solution’ to the development of autonomy as “a middle course between authoritarianism and permissiveness” (ibid.). His proposed ‘balance’ encapsulates, but does not resolve, one of liberalism’s major tensions, the idea of freedom being achieved through considerable unfreedom, or autonomy being achieved through the restraint of desire and emotion. In contrast to the autonomous individual, the heteronomous person can be described as one whose thought and actions are governed by other people, in that she adopts or accepts ideas, beliefs, demands, opinions and tasks to which she is exposed without subjecting them to personal scrutiny. Dearden (1972) also argues, in Kantian manner, that the following of wants and desires is heteronomous, in that the preferences are external to the rational activity of the mind, and therefore determined by outside influence50. Further contrast is offered in Feinberg’s concept of ‘anomie’. Unlike autonomy and heteronomy, which have some system of law as an integrating factor for thought and action, ‘anomie’ refers to a person’s “inability to order her desires, purposes, and ideals into some hierarchy of importance, urgency or worthwhileness” (Lankshear, 1982, p. 99). The ‘anomic’ individual makes no attempt to live consistently and lacks standards or principles governing thought and belief with no criteria for establishing truth. Although the anomic individual might be pathologised as “breaking down into a heterarchy or psychoses” (ibid.), the 50

Imperatives based on wants and desires would be contingent, and therefore incapable of being an apodictic practical rule, such as the moral rule must be (Kant, 1988, p. 74).

114

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

condition of ‘anomie’ appears to share some common boundaries with Walker’s (op. cit.) account of autonomy as inclusive of desire and emotion, and Sartre’s existential spontaneity of choice. The denigration of anomie exposes the normalised status of a system of rational law (whether that be an autonomous or heteronomous process), and is a good example of how some positions are marginalised and others empowered as ‘true’. Lankshear argues that the autonomous person is free, “in virtue of her reason triumphing over the constraining influence of desire, impulse, prejudice, inclination etc...”, and that “...her thought and action is not imposed by her milieu” (1982, p. 114). However, such triumph is problematic, particularly if one were to adopt an account of autonomy that includes desire and emotion, in which case the triumph of reason over desire (contra Hume’s formulation of reason as ‘slave to the passions’) is not so much ‘freedom’, as an internal conflict with the denial of the emotive self. Irrespective of whether desire is considered part of autonomy, it will be argued that a Nietzschean perspective removes any metaphysical ground to appeal to. Reason, desire and emotion are all features of the cultural landscape and aspects of human sociality. Rather than trying to adjudicate in an indeterminate contest, it may be more profitable to examine the philosophical assumptions underlying various conceptions of autonomy, and the relationship between autonomy and a constituent rationality/morality. Such an examination provides a framework that establishes why Nietzsche (and Foucault) would be sceptical about the notion of autonomy, not only as an aim of education, but as a possibility in itself. SUBJECTIVITY

Towards the end of his career, Foucault announced that the goal of his work during the previous twenty years had not been an analysis of power, but to examine the ways in which human beings are constituted as subjects: the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. My work has dealt with three modes of objectification which transform human beings into subjects. The first is the modes of inquiry which try to give themselves the status of the sciences… In the second part of my work, I have studied the objectivising of the subject in what I shall call ‘dividing practices’ … Finally, I have sought to study – it is my current work – the way a human being turns him – or herself into a subject. For example, I have chosen the domain of sexuality… Thus it is not power, but the subject, that is the general theme of my research (Foucault, 2001c, p. 326-27). Foucault, like Nietzsche, would have difficulty in accepting any of the accounts of autonomy presented above. His objection to autonomy is based on a rejection not only of universal reason or morality, but also of an essential human nature. In other words, he rejects not only the rational nomos but would claim that the autos is not independent of the human sciences in which man becomes the subject and the object of his own investigations. He vigorously opposes the acceptance of universal moral laws by independent individuals. He prefers to talk instead of

115

CHAPTER 7

struggles against the ‘government of individualisation’, struggles that question the status of the individual: On the one hand, they assert the right to be different and underline everything that makes individuals truly individual. On the other hand, they attack everything that separates the individual, breaks his links with others, splits up community life, forces the individual back on himself, and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way (Foucault, 2001c, p. 330). The self does not deliberate upon and accept laws in an uncontaminated (and uncontaminating) milieu as proposed by Lankshear. Foucault would argue that the milieu in which one adopts the mode of rational inquiry is very much implicated in the development of what is accepted as truth and knowledge. Technologies of the self were such as to “construct an autos ‘predisposed’ to accept a certain type of nomos, and a type which can lead to subjection and domination” (Marshall, 1996a, p. 165). At best the process could be regarded as heteronomous, as the individual is inducted into the mode of a rational morality based on a concept of universal reason, in which particular truths are normalised. Objections to the idea of autonomy are inherent in Foucault’s idea of ‘governmentality’, a term referring to the governance of self and others that accounts for not only the way in which the discourse is constructed, but also the way in which individuals construct themselves within such discourse. Governmentality incorporates what Foucault calls technologies of domination concerned with defining and controlling the conduct of individuals; and technologies of self, where the self is implicated in its own governance. Technologies of domination essentially act on the body and as a result of surveillance and classification, individuals become objects of knowledge. Foucault (1977) locates the development of the disciplines through a genealogy of prison practices and the beginning of individualisation through classification. As these objective classifications are adopted and accepted, certain knowledge and behaviours become normalised, and individual identities are constructed. Foucault refers to the process as a ‘mechanics of power’, which defines how one may have hold over others’ bodies: not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile’ bodies (Foucault, 1977, p. 138). In later writings, Foucault (1990) coins the term ‘techniques of self’ to indicate how we constitute our very identities within the available discourses. The key to technology of the self is the belief that it is possible to tell the truth about one’s self. According to Foucault, talking to professionals in a confessional manner about the body and its desires was seen to reveal the deepest truths about one’s self. “Spoken in time, to the proper party, and by the person who was both the bearer of it and the one responsible for it, the truth healed” (Foucault, 1990, p. 67). He notes in our civilisation no ars erotica, but instead a scientia sexualis, based on procedures for telling the truth of sex, geared to a form of ‘knowledge-power’. It is

116

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

through the confessional practices that sex has been scientised, with definitions of what counts as truth, left to experts. The human sciences form “discursive practices that penetrate and inform the professions and their accompanying institutions such as medicine, psychiatry, psychology the law and education” (Marshall, 1995, p. 27). One has not only to tell the truth in the confession, but to do so within the ‘official’ discourse. “In speaking this truth, in knowing one’s true self one constructs the experience of sex, and one reconstructs one’s self by adopting new descriptions and ‘hopefully’ new practices” (ibid., p. 28). Development of the discourse around sexual relationships created particular possibilities for notions of ‘desire’ and ‘emotion’. Whether these concepts constitute part of personal autonomy is immaterial, since the self who may express desire or feel emotion is acting within the ‘official’ discourse on sexuality, speaking oneself into a position hardly indicative of an independent autos. In the normalising procedures of examination and confession, people are classified as objects, and the truth about themselves revealed to themselves. In constituting the subject in these ways, in constructing the very identity of individuals, modern power produces governable individuals through technologies of individualisation and normalisation. “According to Foucault the personal search for autonomy and identity, when mired in humanistic notions of the subject and liberal talk of rationality and emancipation will only aid and abet such processes” (Marshall, 1995, p. 32). Thus there is no sovereign individual or transcendental subject, but “only human beings that have been historically constituted as subjects in different ways at different times” (M. Peters, 2003, p. 2). Foucault argues that the construction of the self through the concept of sexuality functioned to control both the individual and – facilitated by the development of statistical technology – the whole population, as the beginning of what he calls ‘bio-power’. The concept is located in the development of capitalism, as a means of achieving “the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes” (Foucault, 1990, p. 141). Bio-power, as a means of maintaining their availability and their docility, needed the law to operate non violently and to achieve regulation and control through a process of normalisation. Individuals developed their particular identity as subjects, in two senses of the word: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to (Foucault, 2001c, p. 331). This notion of ‘subject’ is thus a major stumbling block to the possibility of personal autonomy. The independent ‘autos’ is no longer possible, since thought and action cannot be free while the subject is constituted as an object of knowledge, as an object of the human sciences, or as an object of political control. One example of such a subject is the ‘rationally autonomous chooser’ (Marshall, 1996b), perpetually responding to manipulation of the economic and social environment, not only free to choose, but forced to choose. Lyotard notes the

117

CHAPTER 7

autonomous chooser is cut off from a shared community form of life and more liable to be ‘picked off’ by the information systems, consumer products and media, “through which individual choices increasingly come to be exercised” (Marshall, 1996b, p. 95). The autos then is very much subject to economic and individualistic interests. Children too are subject(ed) to a variety of constraints. Not considered as rational beings, (i.e., not having reached the age of reason) and therefore not capable of making choices about their own needs or interests, they may be considered as needing constraint until they become inculcated into the disciplines and traditional forms of thought (R. Peters, 1966). J. S. Mill’s (1982) principle of liberty had, a century earlier, promoted a similar paternalism towards ‘children and persons under age’ whom he saw as ‘manifestly unfit’ to abandon to their own guidance. Mill’s reach extended to the ‘delirious’, or those “in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty” (p. 166) – deficiencies which justified their being “placed under an education of restraint, to fit them for future admission to the privileges of freedom” (p. 172). Of course many adults would pride themselves on the ‘caring’ way they provide guidance to their children or the respectful tone of their interactions with children, and would claim that they have a beneficent concern for the child’s emotional development and the building of self esteem. However, the adult is still very much imposing the limits, with the child adopting behaviour consistent with preestablished social norms. What is contestable in this gradual shaping of children’s subjectivity is not whether they are constrained, but how they are constrained. The paradox for Marshall is, “Whence then creativity, originality and initiative?” (1996c, p. 112). The discursive formation of personal autonomy as an educational aim in such an environment plays a part not only in the definition of behavioural norms, both for the subject population and for government agencies; but also in the “construction of programmes for the normalisation of those in the subject population whose behaviour fails to conform” (Hindess, 1996, p. 73). The norm of autonomy leaves us with a self that is “obliged to live its life tied to the project of its own identity” (Rose, 1991, p. 254). Foucault suggests that man became an object of knowledge so that he could become subject of his own liberty and his own existence. Investigations into the nature of ‘man’, and the related study of the evolution of language were to provide the key to human essence. Instead, says Foucault, “this famous man, this human nature, this human essence or this essential human feature was never discovered” (Foucault, 1996, p. 52). What was found instead was an unconscious which functioned like a language, which had absolutely nothing to do with what one could expect of the human essence, of freedom or human existence. ‘Man’ had disappeared. There being no essential humanity, Foucault cannot entertain the concept of an autos as an independent being capable of adopting a nomos, rational or otherwise. Whether one believes autonomy to require a rational moral position (e.g., Barrow), merely a rational one (e.g., Dearden), or some other version (e.g., Walker or Sartre); Foucault’s notion of governmentality suggests that the search for

118

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

autonomy is not an uncontaminated choice, but as one political philosopher suggests, a perpetual search: In the institutions, discourses, and practices of the human sciences, individuals are constituted as the particular objects that have a dynamic of subjectivity. They are built so that they must be constantly in search of themselves and, ironically enough, so that they perpetually fail the criteria set for them and thus need ceaseless effort and re-examination, re-immersion in that which forms them (Gruber, 1989, p. 617). The utilitarian notion of autonomy advanced by Barrow is reliant upon a universal morality, one that everyone would have to submit to – a prospect Foucault deems “catastrophic” (1996, p. 473). In Nietzschean style, Foucault eschews the notion of a universal morality, expressing doubt about the origin of any universal reason. In explaining the process of genealogy, Foucault claims that the history of reason and the precision of scientific methods arose from “the passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their spirit of competition – the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason” (Foucault, 1984d, p. 78). Enlightenment notions of autonomy based on such reason can have no a priori position for Foucault. He sees the rule of law not as progress towards enlightened reason, but as a replacement for warfare, as “humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination” (ibid., p. 151). For Foucault, there is no universal truth and no totalising theory, but rather a set of mechanisms for the production of truth, a process for legitimating certain claims to truth, and techniques for identifying those who are charged with saying what counts as true. He describes instead a ‘regime’ of truth, as part of a political discourse linked to systems of power, and understood as a “system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements” (Foucault, 1980, p. 133). As an explanation of the way that particular ‘truths’ and ‘knowledges’ become accepted as real, Foucault developed the notion of ‘power/knowledge’. Through an examination of the development of prisons, Foucault (1977) tracked the growth of disciplinary society as a whole, extending his analysis to schools, factories, barracks and hospitals. Power relations are examined, not from the point of view of an internal rationality, but by investigating the points of resistance in everyday life which categorised the individual and constructed the truth about his identity. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. It is in disciplinary blocks that power/knowledge was developed and is ‘exercised’ according to knowledge which has itself been the product of the exercise of power (Marshall, 1996a). Mirroring Nietzsche’s valorisation of the agonistic contest in which one grows stronger by engaging with worthy opponents, Foucault’s notion of power exists only where there is a possibility of resistance – not as dialectical opposition, but through ceaseless struggles at strategic points of local resistance. Criticism is often levelled at Foucault for appearing to ignore the importance of forms of aggregated power such as the State, with Poulantzas accusing him of conducting “nothing

119

CHAPTER 7

more than a guerrilla war and scattered acts of harassment of power” (Hunt & Wickham, 1994, p. 18). However, as a means of avoiding Marxist-style revolution, Foucault offers the possibility of a plurality of resistances. He suggests, for instance, that from the pathologisation of woman where the “female body became the medical object par excellence” (Foucault, 1996, p. 218), there emerged the development of feminism, reinventing the possibilities for political, cultural and social existence. “Since power marginalises, silences and excludes, the marginalised, silenced and excluded are always present. We listen to the excluded voices of resistance” (Hunt & Wickham, 1994, p. 17). Where there is power, there must (for Foucault) be resistance. Whether any freedom is to be obtained through a more ‘adequate’ political strategic resistance will have little to do with any version of autonomy outlined so far. The individual for Foucault is a fiction fabricated by power: … power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production (Foucault, 1977, p. 194). Foucault’s position then stands in stark contrast to enlightenment notions of personal autonomy. The autos and the nomos are neither rational nor free. Sartre’s offering of ‘authenticity’ is undermined by the idea of the self implicated in the process of subjectification. The production of truth and the exercise of ‘authenticity’ are entwined in the discourse of power, with ‘subjects’ of education bound to the production of purportedly ‘free’ selves. Foucault’s dual perspective on subjectivity is clear in the Latin derivation of the word ‘subject’, stemming from the word iacere – to throw or toss, and the prefix sub – meaning under. One ‘throws oneself under’ a particular regime at the same time as one ‘is thrown under’ – simultaneously an active and a passive process. For Nietzsche, ‘going under’ was a necessary but only preparatory step in the Übermenschlich trajectory (Z I, Prologue §4), in which one might throw oneself over rather than under – ‘superject’ rather than ‘subject’ perhaps, although the terms are less important than what they signify. What is important here is the upward trajectory as the driving force in life – to ‘throw over’ or go above, although there is also room for the sense of ‘overthrow’ of adversarial forces implicated in the Nietzschean process of becoming. A Foucauldian analysis destabilises autonomy and rationality as the essence of human ‘nature’, and offers instead as a means to proceed, the possibility of a plurality of resistances. Foucault extends Nietzsche’s critique of modernity in his deconstruction of the autonomous individual reconstituted in his notion of ‘subjectivity’ For Nietzsche, there is no ‘being’ behind the ‘doing’ – ‘the doer’ is “merely a fiction added to the deed” (GM I §13). Similarly, for Foucault, there is no subject, but a “production of subjectivity: subjectivity has to be produced when its time arrives, precisely because there is no subject” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 113).

120

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

MECHANISMS OF SUBJECTIVITY

Without adopting a deterministic view and even allowing for a ‘plurality of resistances’, it is argued here that social and political conditions impact on the parameters within which subjectivity takes shape. In the latter part of the twentieth century, economic and social policy in Western societies – under such banners as Thatcherism, Reagonomics, or the New Zealand equivalent, Rogernomics – has been underpinned by a regime of neoliberalism – a form of market liberalism, promoting competitive individualism with a corresponding de-emphasis on social cohesiveness51. Neoliberal government policy advocates a minimal level of state service provision, celebrating a society in which “free individuals pursue their own interests in the marketplace according to agreed rules of conduct, and thereby maximise the use of information and resources to the benefit of the community as a whole” (Upton, 1987, p. 21) . Although posing as a traditional liberal ideal, such a regime represents “market liberalisation, corporatisation and privatisation of state businesses, taxation reform which favour[s] the rich, and reductions of free services from the welfare state” (Easton, 1993, p. 149). The economic argument for the reforms is that the privatised, competitive market structure will produce more efficient economic performance. However, the international neoliberal discourse (see Haworth, 1994) that underpinned New Zealand’s programme of structural adjustment has been the target of severe criticism. Kelsey, for example documents the evangelical fervour of the New Zealand Experiment, describing the results of economic fundamentalism in terms of the economic, social, democratic and cultural deficits in which the market was left to “reconcile competing efficiency and equity outcomes, and the State retreated towards providing a minimal safety net” (1995, p. 207). As economic reality for most people has made it increasingly harder to sustain credibility in government promises of a better society under the rationale of the market, the programme of structural adjustment has demanded a new explanation. More recently, neoliberal regimes have ostensibly undergone a ‘softening’ of focus with a revival of emphasis on such terms as ‘civil society’, ‘family’ and ‘community’ as motivations for intensification of individual effort. Rather than labouring the promise of the economic benefits to society, a new wave of neoconservative fundamentalism has sprung up in politics and philosophy, espousing the moral benefits of a new civil society in terms of reducing dependence on the welfare system through self reliance and local philanthropy. Green’s (1996) guiding metaphor is the unpoliticised community, in which individuals work towards the common good, building on their strength and skills, as they seek solutions to shared problems. Despite the humanitarian and social appeal of such normative concepts, however, the notion of subjectivity reveals an intensification of government at the level of the individual citizen. 51

Acknowledged but not detailed here is a large volume of critique of neoliberal rationality and its effect on society and education; see for example: Haworth (1994); Wilkinson (1995); Marginson (1997); or for a more extended treatment, Chapters 4, 5 & 6 in Peters & Marshall (1996); Chapters 1 – 6 in Peters & Roberts (1999).

121

CHAPTER 7

One of the most outspoken advocates for the new form of subjectivity is British sociologist, Anthony Giddens, with his theorising of what has become known as the “third way” (Giddens, 1998). Acknowledging the stultifying effects of old socialism, and turning his back on the paradigm of the unregulated market, Giddens envisages a society: more egalitarian than it is today, but which is meritocratic and pluralistic; where the devolution of government is further advanced, but within a unitary nation; which is marked by a deepening environmental consciousness; and where there is a restoration of the public sphere and public power (Giddens, 2002, p. 38). It is, he suggests, a ‘third way’ in the sense that it is an attempt to transcend both old-style social democracy and neoliberalism, in which the State, the economy and civil society are in balance – an equilibrium that might have found favour with Adam Smith. Such a balance involves the public sector “collaborating with nonstate agencies, including non-profit organizations, third sector groups and private companies” (Giddens, 2002, p. 79) English Prime Minister, Tony Blair, describes the ‘third way’ as “a rediscovery of our essential values – the belief in community, opportunity and responsibility” (Callinicos, 2001, p. 45). Such an interpretation is in line with a modernised view of development as synonymous with an expansion of personal freedom (Sen, 1999) – a view that involves a ‘deep complementarity’ between individual agency and social arrangements, in which individuals are seen as “active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits” (Sen, 1999, p. xiii). Such a view contrasts sharply with a common view of development, reported regularly in daily newspapers and economic journals, as growth in gross national product, rise in personal incomes, increased industrialization, technological advance or social modernization. In New Zealand, the current government focus on values such as equality, social solidarity, community and social justice is, in effect, a furtherance of ‘third way’ direction, although in 2001, Steve Maharey, Minister of Social Development, announced a preference for the less exotic term, “new social democracy” (Kelsey, 2002, p. 79). Integral to the New Zealand context is the idea of civil society, in which individuals are redefined as being morally and financially responsible for their own welfare, education and health (Bolger, 1995a; 1995b). Government strategy has been to devolve responsibility for state welfare to local communities, especially Not-for-Profit organisations, sometimes referred to as the third sector, or the ‘shadow state’ (Wolch, 1990). The New Zealand Government is currently following the British lead in establishing a ‘Charities Commission’ as a “registration, reporting and monitoring system for charitable societies, institutions and trusts” (Ministry of Economic Development, 2004). The new legislation is expressly intended to: increase the charitable sector’s accountability and transparency; provide the Government with information on who benefits from tax assistance; and, “aid the Government with

122

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

social policy development” (ibid.). In Britain, a “compliance campaign”52 has also been introduced to ensure adherence to reporting schedules, including a section on ‘How we can help you to meet our requirements’. One of the ‘helpful’ methods is to publish a blacklist with full details of ‘persistent defaulters’ on a publicly accessible website. The UK Commission is also drafting ‘guidelines’ (which tend to very quickly become ‘regulations’) for the recruitment, selection and appointment of Trustees. It is clear, then, that the operation of charities and the voluntary sector is fast becoming an unashamedly explicit instrument of government social policy rather than an historical alternative to it53. The harnessing of voluntarism both supports and is supported by the social and economic reforms set in place in New Zealand since 1984, amplified in the ‘third way’ discourse. A significant feature of the new discourse is a decreasing reliance on government provision of welfare, the emergence of the notion of ‘social capital’54, an increased focus on partnership between government agencies and the community, and an increased role for voluntary organisations – albeit under tighter government surveillance. Self-reliance is encouraged through the rhetoric of individual liberty and community, a process which the current examination of subjectivity exposes as an intensification of moral regulation, underpinned by the rhetoric of personal freedom and social progress. Of particular ethical concern is the appropriation to a particular political purpose of centuries-old traditions of communal life and the belief in autonomous agency, which motivate individual participation in society. A similar pattern is evident in Dean’s (1991) genealogy of liberal governance, in which the constitution of poverty is portrayed as a product of intentional government practices to maintain a class of wage labourers for early industrial capitalism. To ensure that the population did not outgrow the food supply, the need for subsistence was portrayed as a God-given biological law, a moral imperative, supported by the church, with salvation tied to disciplined conduct, procreative prudence and unremitting exertion. Early nineteenth century pauperism became associated with moral and physical contagion, with epidemics and mental and physical disease, with political disturbances and crimes, with the demoralisation of the labouring classes, criminality and political upheaval. By addressing religious and moral arguments about public poor relief, Malthus’s (1993) ‘principle of population’ provided theological justification for denying a 52 53

54

See (http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/investigations/compliance.asp). Smith and Lipsky (1993) argue that non-profit organisations are important to our concept of community and citizen empowerment because they represent the efforts of people to take collective action outside the umbrella of government. Increasing convergence with the norms and practices of government organisations represents a significant challenge to minority interests often represented by the non-profit sector. The term ‘social capital’ is as much a politico-economic device as a norm of sociability. It has been defined variously in terms of: ‘spontaneous sociability’, trust and strong cooperation between state, community, and family (Fukuyama, 1995); ‘social cohesion’ and ‘responsibility’ (Department of Social Welfare, 1998); and what Bellah, et al. (1985) call 'habits of the heart'. Former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, goes as far as to describe social capital as the “sum of all that’s good in society” (1998, p. 259). A common aspect is the reliance on voluntary effort for what were formerly government responsibilities.

123

CHAPTER 7

public system of relief, claiming that poverty provides incentives for sobriety and industry, and that the provision of relief would attack the moral character of the poor. The Malthusian strategy was one of moral restraint, seeking to construct adult males as breadwinners, as “rational virtuous beings” (Dean, 1991, p. 82) responsible for the subsistence of themselves, their wives and their children. The Malthusian strategy relies on a moralised subjectivity that illuminates much of the ‘third way’ rhetoric of today. One way to understand how the poor came to be responsible for their standard of living, is through Foucault’s notion of governmentality – the process by which the individual becomes the subject and the object of its own domination. In this view, the external constraint of ‘police’ was translated into an internal constraint upon the conduct of the self, resulting in “the formation of subjects who were prepared to take responsibility for their actions and for whom the ethic of discipline was part of their very mental fabric” (Rose, 1991, p. 223). The valorised notion of ‘family’ is also implicated in the subjugation. Acknowledging a considerable debt to Foucault’s notion of ‘policing’, Donzelot (1979) examines the role of philanthropy, education, psychiatry and social work in the control and the definition of family life, showing how the State acts to strengthen and increase its own power, by obtaining an optimum number of workers at minimum public expense. He tracks the transition of government of families, to government through the family. Self-government is promoted through an intensification of family life, through psychoanalytic modes of self-regulation, and through surveillance of the family around children’s education. Donzelot identifies the beginnings of what we would recognise as ‘the family’ in the second half of the nineteenth century. “In practice, the woman was brought out of the convent so that she would bring the man out of the cabaret; for this she was given a weapon – housing – and told how to use it: keep strangers out so as to bring the husband and especially the children in” (Donzelot, 1979, p. 40). The promotion of hygiene and welfare could only be successful through the active engagement of individuals, with the family operating as a “voluntary and responsible machine for the rearing and moralising of children, in which adults would commit themselves to the task of promoting the physical and mental welfare of their offspring” (Rose, 1991, p. 130). Through philanthropy, the model of bourgeois family behaviour was transmitted to the poorer classes. The purpose was to moralise behaviour through family life; promoting savings, education and counselling in a deliberately depoliticising “mission of domination, pacification and social integration” (Donzelot, 1979, p. 32). This was the mode in which the individual became the responsible autonomous subject of family, and is suggested as an analogy to explain how individuals are now being asked to take on the governing metaphor of a nonpolitical community, based on “mutual respect and responsibility, and a willingness to shoulder burdens for the common good” (Green, 1996, p. 198). Community education, community welfare and community health organisations are all in place to lend some philanthropic ‘assistance’, should the community subject not shoulder enough of that burden.

124

NIETZSCHE, AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY

One way in which individuals are being constructed as inadequate in terms of community morality is through the notion of dependency, a term that captures the disabled, the sick, addicts, neurotics and children. The psychologised notion of welfare dependency moves the welfare recipient into the Foucauldian realm of Donzelot’s psy specialists, as either pathological or infantilised, to be cured or treated like a child. Either way, the welfare recipient is judged – within the “rhetoric of pauperism’ (Fraser & Gordon, 1994, p. 328) – as morally irresponsible. From a perspective of social concern, Kelsey (2002) argues that ‘third way’ does little to address the earlier critique she levelled at neoliberalism and is, in fact, a political project whose objective is short-term political management, rather than any real social transformation, resulting in “a more deeply embedded form of neoliberalism” (p. 50)55 . She argues, too, that the ‘third way’ remains firmly centred on the individual, and that these new ‘third way’ elements are merely grafted onto the old fundamentals of fiscal austerity, privatisation, free trade, labour market deregulation, foreign investment and deregulation. The result is a policy agenda which sees “the rich and powerful speculating on how to improve the lot of the poor through promoting their self-help and organisation without questioning the sources of their economic disadvantage” (p. 114). Callinicos (2001) identifies three main strands in ‘third way’ ethics: community, equality, and a focus on international relationships – the last of which is extended to give nations an ethical right (obligation even) to interfere in foreign politics under the guise of humanitarian intervention. He argues, too, that nations that have adopted a ‘third way’ approach still operate within a system of international capitalism, and that the model is still essentially an economic one that does little to protect the interests of minorities – “an ideological façade behind which capitalism continues on its brutal and destructive way” (Callinicos, 2001, p. 120). Just as the individual is constituted as a subject of the family, it is argued here that the idea of community is a rhetorical banner under which we are transformed into ‘community subjects’. With the language of participation, partnership, consensus and empowerment, aspirations to ‘community’ might be considered free from an obvious patriarchy, and thus outside feminist critiques of the patriarchal family. In expansive mode, the liberal community presents itself as open to all through such normative constructions as democratic participation, evoking images of belonging and offering promises of participation in an inclusive society that the neoliberal reforms of the welfare state have all but destroyed.

55

Kelsey is critical of a number of aspects: the massive redistribution of wealth and the vulnerability of a national economy dominated by private, largely foreign and speculative capital; the withdrawal of the State’s commitment to maintain genuine full employment; the growth in highly exploitive low-skilled and casualised employment; the further marginalisation and impoverishment of Maori; the reallocation of the tax burden onto workers and the poor; the insecurity of affordable access to essentials like electricity and water, the deterioration of the public service infrastructure; a legal and institutional framework designed to give the market priority; the political ascendance of capital over citizens; and much more (Kelsey, 2002, pp. 51-2).

125

CHAPTER 7

There are, however, various identifiable conceptions of community, such as: the face to face group; pockets of kinship or proximity; a ‘just’ distribution of resources; the antithesis of ‘the market’; a collection of social work agencies; a set of altruistic relationships; a cost saving mechanism for rationing scarce resources; and, a way of overcoming the crisis of the welfare state (Peters & Marshall, 1996). Given the philosophical differences that underlie the various constructions of community and the difference in political perspectives implied in such diversity, attempts by government to enrol citizens into a unified ‘community’ suggest an ulterior motive – a mechanism for securing agreement with, and commitment to, government policy. Notions of family and community serve as a mediating agency for government so that voluntarism might appear as not compulsory. Rather than being enforced via policing or dispensed through welfare, government-directed change is desired – a rather Orwellian picture in which neither negative obedience nor abject submission will do: “When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will” (Orwell, 1989, p. 267). Through community, through family and through ‘third way’ politics, we are introduced to a more individually responsibilised form of neoliberal subjectivity – one in which the discourse of ‘community’ is normalised. With ‘community’ as an essentially contested concept, however, its affirmation as an international value is interpretable as “a ‘caring’ veneer pasted over the relentless commodification of the world that is the inner truth of the Third Way” (Callinicos, 2001, p. 65). The ‘third way’ then does not liberate us from the Foucauldian critique of autonomy or from the socio-cultural critique of neoliberalism. It is interpreted here as a form of governmentality that acts to intensify capitalism. With socialism and unrestrained markets also leaving much to be desired, hopes for a better world usually turn to talk of democracy. However, democracy is not a panacea for all social ills and no call is made here for a nostalgic return to a warm and mythical social bosom. As the next chapter argues, a Nietzschean interpretation of democracy (as we know it) suggests that it, too, is insufficient as a basis for educational ethics.

126

CHAPTER 8

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY

It is tempting to link the word ‘democracy’ with images of free speech, social justice and an inclusive form of government. However, ‘democracy’ is not merely a descriptive term. It has been used to justify a variety of competing ideologies, ranging from the ‘thin’ democracy of classical liberal politics to strong calls for equality, communal citizenship, political commitment and collective action. Although its meaning is widely contested, what underpins the various notions of democracy is an egalitarian concern for human dignity based on the inherent value of reason. Rational argument is held up as the basis of ethical and political debate. In the light of Nietzsche’s critique of enlightenment rationality and his genealogy of morality, this chapter examines some prevalent accounts of democracy and problematises its relation to education. Any normative account of democracy that Nietzsche had in mind was, and obviously still is, something “yet to come” (WS §293). Kant’s rejection of divine intervention and non-rational authority as an ethical source, along with Schopenhauer’s subsequent challenge to universal reason, provided fertile ground for Nietzsche’s ensuing interrogation of his religious upbringing, his rejection of conformity and his hostility towards domination by the State. While Nietzsche’s ideas developed through a period of idealism in German philosophy, there was a general progressive trend throughout Western Society towards socialism and industrialisation. The social and cultural milieu featured a nationalistic fervour in politics, epitomised by Bismarck’s unification of nineteenth century Germany and military dominance as an assertion of German culture in Europe. Nietzsche was bitter about the negative focus and the transcendental character of the dialectic in Hegel’s deification of the ‘absolute’, enshrined in the promotion of the State as the ultimate good. In Hegelian terms, societal change was interpreted as evolutionary improvement, with human nature as a model of incremental and historical progress. The intensification of the State impinged on the expression of personal freedom at the heart of Nietzsche’s will to power. Throughout the nineteenth century, Germany opposed radical intellectual movements, removed dissenting intellectuals from universities, burned offending books, and promoted a powerful state under Bismarck’s rule of ‘blood and iron’. Marxism was popularised as a form of social philosophy, further eroding the possibility of a resurgence of individualism. The ‘Age of Progress’ was, for Nietzsche, anything but. Instead, he saw nineteenth century society as a stultifying and negative environment for the development of culture and the genius. His engagement with

127

CHAPTER 8

both his philosophical predecessors and his political contemporaries leads Small (2001) to argue that Nietzsche’s original style of writing was more than a meandering commentary; constituting, in fact, a radical revaluation of nineteenth century thought grounded in the social context of his time. Although a generous reading of Nietzsche (e.g., Sassone 1996) might provide support for some aspects of democratic freedom, Nietzsche’s philosophy is more usually seen as a sustained critique of the rational basis of Western thought and an attack on egalitarian concern for human dignity. Any sense of moral obligation or social justice arising from egalitarian concern was seen as a levelling device that snuffed out the light of individual genius, thus preventing the development of ‘true’ culture. For Nietzsche, socialism and communism were patterns of collectivist decadence and social control – the antithesis of individual responsibility and an obstacle to personal brilliance. Such systems valued the collective good of society over any individual member, and prevented the emergence of the highest types that carried Nietzsche’s hopes for future humanity. Although the twentieth century has seen to a large extent the demise of socialist and communist regimes throughout Europe, Nietzsche’s social critique still applies today in relation to the constraints of democracy on the expression of individuality. In spite of the promise of freedom, liberal democracy represents a subjection to the transcendental world of reason and an abdication of individual responsibility to a wider group. For Nietzsche, ethical responsibility resided in knowing one’s own traditions, overcoming the nihilism of modernity at an individual level and asserting one’s own creative definitions of life. CONSTRUCTIONS OF DEMOCRACY

‘Liberty’, ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’ were the catchwords of the French revolution that became the cornerstones of Western democracy, although the particular mix of the three allows for volumes of difference in the resulting politics. The libertarian for example might argue for equal access and freedom from constraint for individuals as a means of achieving a balanced community, while the social democrat would argue for stronger government and more constraint in an attempt to achieve equality of outcomes. Commitment to a particular political perspective goes further than the level of argument; it extends to vocabulary, where terms like ‘community’, ‘equality’, ‘freedom’ and even the term ‘democratic’, are appropriated according to the perspectives of their speakers. In spite of differences though, it is possible to delineate a few edges of the territory marked out by the word ‘democracy’. In its ideals, democracy would not support unwarranted social superiority. Equally, it would not allow for extreme versions of totalitarian government or communism. The difficulty lies in securing agreement over what is generally accepted to be inside the boundaries of democracy. Stanley Benn and Richard Peters (1959) brought together the disciplines of political studies and educational philosophy in an early investigation into the relationship between what is implied in ‘being reasonable’ and the principles and institutions of the democratic state. The two authors critique a number of popular epithets that attempt to encapsulate what democracy means. Among these are such

128

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

notions as ‘majority rule’, ‘sovereignty of the people’, ‘the will of the people’, ‘unified will’, ‘freedom to associate’, and a more utopian ‘government by persons freely chosen by and responsible to the governed’. Although they find each descriptively ambiguous and inadequate as a definition, they suggest the term may still have “prescriptive force in the different contexts in which it is used” (Benn & Peters, 1959, p. 332). Democracy, they say, is not merely a set of political institutions like universal suffrage, parliamentary government or majority vote, but also a set of operational principles that make reasons public and allow for public participation in protest and decision-making. Peters and Benn see these ideas as compatible with the principles of impartiality and respect for persons as sources of claims and arguments; principles which underlie political ideals like justice, liberty and equality. Democracy, they argue, is a way of coming to terms with the need for authority while maintaining a sense of individual responsibility. Harking back to Locke’s theory of natural rights, Benn & Peters argue that the justification of democracy lies in two aspects: firstly, that every person must be respected as a source of claims, and must not be treated as a mere instrument; and secondly, that all interests must be rationally justified and weighed impartially. Their justification of democracy lies then, not in a ‘tyranny of the majority’, but in conferring on every individual “the opportunity to voice a claim which no government could afford to ignore” (1959, p. 350). The giving of reasons is a key factor in this definition of democracy, with government conducted in an atmosphere of criticism and discussion. To prevent discussion degenerating into mere abuse, freedom of discussion must also be accompanied by a minimal respect for each person as a source of arguments. In a more recent analysis, Held (1996) identifies several constructions of democracy: the classical idea of democracy in ancient Athens; the republican conception of a self-governing community; liberal democracy; and the Marxist conception of direct democracy. He also examines in detail four twentieth-century models: competitive elitist democracy, pluralism, legal democracy and participatory democracy; four models56 which he considers to be of central importance to political debate. Although the term ‘democracy’ serves a legitimating role for political and social life, the nature of democracy is fundamentally contested both as an idea and as a political reality. Also contested are many of the key terms of democracy, such as the proper meaning of ‘political participation’, the idea of choosing freely between political alternatives, and the nature of membership in a democratic community. Simplistic definitions draw upon the root meanings of the word: demos (people) and kratos (rule) – signifying a form of government in which the people rule. This implies some form of political community involving equality among the people. Opinion differs though over what constitutes ‘the people’, and what is meant by ‘rule’. Continuing the proliferation of interpretations, Held (1996) identifies seven distinct conceptions of what ‘rule by the people’ means, ranging from active 56

The current chapter does not specifically focus on the structure that Held proposes, although many aspects of his models are covered in the various constructions of democracy. Of significance here is not Held’s depiction per se, but the variety of perspectives available.

129

CHAPTER 8

involvement in governmental administration to the idea of representation in which the rulers should act in the interests of the people. According to Held, democracy offers – in theory at least – fair and just ways of negotiating values and value disputes. It is, he claims, “the only ‘grand’ or ‘meta-’ narrative that can legitimately frame and delimit the competing ‘narratives’ of the contemporary age” (Held, 1996, p. 298). Democracy is seen as important not as just one value among many, such as liberty, equality or justice; but as the value that can mediate among different normative concerns. Held argues that democracy does not presuppose a synthesis of diverse values, but rather a means of keeping value conflicts open and as a basis for tolerating and negotiating difference. Contrary to Held’s vision, this chapter argues that the extent of diversity is limited by the commonality of values that defines democratic society and culture. In examining the meaning of democracy or comparing various democratic models, it is important to differentiate between descriptive or explanatory statements and those that have a normative function (Held, 1996); that is, between statements about how things are and why they are so, and statements about how things ought to be. It is also worth noting that attempts at defining or promoting democracy in particular ways usually reflect particular political commitments, whether intentional or not. The practice of democracy draws on the tradition of classical Greek thought, although modern democracy occurs in a vastly different environment from the polis of ancient Greece. The polis (from which we derive our term ‘politics’) was a small fortified village, self-governing, with a strong sense of community. To undertake a life of politics one had to be a free man – a description limited to the male citizen as head of the household. It excluded wives and slaves who were bound to the instrumental role of service to the house. It also excluded merchants because of their commitment to commercial life. Reason and speech (logos) were the means to free and equal participation in political life. Barbarians therefore were also considered unworthy since they could not partake in the verbal exchange. Bringing together the Greek word idios (meaning personal, peculiar, distinct, separate or private), and our contemporary pejorative term ‘idiot’, Berry (1989) locates the critique of contemporary individualism within a sphere of ‘idiotic politics’ – this in contrast to an attitude of sociality and communal participation. The political community of ancient Greece was a source of identity and value, so it was by participating in the life of the polis that individuals expressed their humanity. Berry suggests that failure to participate in politics was to “suffer the condition of idiocy, which means that a less than fully human life is being led” (1989, p. 9). Democracy in its pure form suggests a system in which all people govern themselves in all public matters all of the time. Such a form could hardly be expected to function efficiently in the distributed social world of today with nations consisting of millions of citizens. Unlike the early Greek polis, where it was possible for direct participation in political decision-making – for some anyway, what we have in Western society today is generally described as representative democracy. A distinction can be drawn between two broad classifications of representative democracy: firstly, ‘liberal’ or ‘representative’ democracy (a system

130

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

of rule embracing elected ‘officers’ who undertake to ‘represent’ the interests and/or views of citizens within the framework of ‘the rule of law’); and secondly, ‘direct or ‘participatory’ democracy (a system of decision-making about public affairs requiring active involvement of citizens). According to Barber (1984), representative democracy substituted for the pure principle a definition of democracy as a form of government in which some of the people, chosen by (arguably) all, govern in all public matters all of the time. This approach purchased efficiency without sacrificing accountability, but he suggests, at an enormous cost to participation and to citizenship. The degree of representation and the subsequent legitimacy of elected government are moderated considerably by the degree of voter participation. Underpinning liberal democracy is the Kantian account of autonomous individuals as essentially rational, free to pursue their own notion of the good life, and deserving respect as ‘ends in themselves’. As such, they would be free from authoritarianism, living with authority structures and social institutions that are subject to rational scrutiny. From a neo-liberal perspective, Strike argues that the central public function of schooling in a liberal state is the “democratic distribution of rationality” (1982, p. 12), with good pedagogy determined by the concept of rationality and oriented to the promotion of rational autonomy. Within this perspective, justice is defined as equal opportunity rather than equal outcome, family is seen as neutral and natural in the opportunity stakes, and the market is left to mediate any extremes of wealth and poverty. Such thinking echoes the philosophy of Hayek (1971; 1978) that has underpinned the political direction of Western economies for the last two decades. In this view, education has gradually been subsumed under the general rubric of economics, and it is now common for education to be evaluated in terms of its return on investment (Office of the New Zealand Associate Minister of Education, 2002) and to be justified in terms of its instrumental contribution to the economy. A marketised approach to education is criticised by Marshall (1995) for its redefinition of persons as ‘rational autonomous choosers’ amid consumerist and market approaches to education. Critiques of liberal and neo-liberal democracy point to the absence of any firm theory of citizenship, participation, public goods or civic virtue, and expose it as based on the advancement of individualistic and private ends. Barber (1984), for example, argues that the language and imagery of liberalism reflects the Newtonian atomistic view emanating from Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, Mill and Nozick. As such, it reflects the physical cosmos of the scientists: the human world inhabited by units, particles and atoms; rather than the traditional teleological, psychic, and spiritual understandings of the essence of humanity: With a vocabulary of such materiality, liberal theory cannot be expected to give an adequate account of human interdependency, mutualism, cooperation, fellowship, fraternity, community and citizenship (Barber, 1984, p. 35). Because of such social shortcomings, Barber depicts liberal government as a thin form of democracy, deficient in the pleasures of communal participation and in the commitment to a shared politics. It is, he argues, a politics of static interest, never a politics of transformation (Barber, 1984, p. 24).

131

CHAPTER 8

Contrasted with the thin democracy of liberal government is a notion of strong democracy that advocates a more comprehensive commitment to citizenship, participation and political community. Strong democracy is a call for political involvement in everyday decisions that affect our lives. It is concerned to “expand our understanding of what counts as democratic … both the impulse towards liberty, property, and privacy… and the impulse towards equality, participation, and communal citizenship” (Barber, 1984, p. xiv). It represents an attempt to revitalise citizenship while still promoting efficient government. Examples of such involvement fall within what might be called “deliberative democracy” (Crittenden, 2002, p. 192) and include intensification of the use of such mechanisms as polls, referenda, petitions, multi-choice ballots and citizen initiatives, where dialogue and deliberation are more important than the mere casting of a vote. Berry (1989) does not want the language of liberalism disparaged by the worst aspects of competitive individualism – which he associates more with capitalism. There is no necessary connection, Berry claims, between liberal values and capitalist practices in which the individual sees himself unrestrained by society. Rather, he argues, the central ethical principle of liberalism – the freedom of the individual to realise his or her human capacities is more likely to reach fruition in a socialist rather than a capitalist society. Introducing a stronger focus on the social, Berry advances the idea of ‘democratic community’ and draws upon Walzer’s vision of: a strong welfare state run, in part at least, by local and amateur officials; a constrained market; an open and demystified civil service; independent public schools; the sharing of hard work and free time; the protection of religious and familial life; a system of public honoring and dishonoring free from all considerations of rank or class; workers’ control of companies and factories; a politics of parties, movements, meetings, and public debate (Berry, 1989, p. x). In practice then, democracy usually involves some form of popular power in which people are engaged in self-government and self-regulation, usually involving representatives voted into power. Democracy is legitimated by the promotion of various ethical and political positions such as political equality, liberty, moral self-development, common interest and social utility. Its proponents suggest that through rational deliberation it provides a fair compromise in the satisfaction of wants, and that it serves as an efficient vehicle for making decisions that take various interests into account. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

Democracy, like liberalism, draws upon the need for a dignified acceptance of individual points of view, and on the sense of community implied by a coming together of those views. Because of the huge political work conducted under the banner of a word like ‘democracy’, it is easy for liberalism and democracy to be conflated. For the purposes of this argument, Nietzsche’s critique is portrayed as

132

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

two separate (but related) issues. On the one hand is his critique of the rational individual at the heart of liberalism and the resulting reliance on reason as the ground for ethics. From this rational essence emanated the Kantian idea of autonomy and the liberal predilection to be free from unnecessary constraint in the exercising of a democratic ‘voice’. On the other hand, is Nietzsche’s abhorrence at the idea that human dignity (stemming from a rational essence) accords equally to all and so all should have a say in the affairs of government. Before moving to Nietzsche’s critique, however, it is useful to examine how democratic notions are applied to the field of education. A defining moment for philosophy of education in Britain was the publication of Richard Peters’ (1966) treatise, Ethics and Education, that drew together the Kantian idea of rational autonomy and the political process of democracy. He provides three interpretations of the nexus between democracy and education – all of which he sees as relevant and important. First, the democratisation of education – a process in which education should be available for all and fairly distributed; and in which teachers should make themselves more effectively into a ‘profession’ with attention to training and a code of ethics. Second, the school can be thought of as a democratic institution. Although formal authorities are appointed, staff are to be consulted on certain issues and pupils encouraged to participate in decisionmaking. This is not to speak against authority, for Peters is a firm believer in properly constituted (i.e., rational) authority (R. Peters, 1974). Rather, it is a call for schools to be based on rational discussion. The third interpretation is what Peters calls education for democracy, involving preparation for participation in public life and development of the willingness to participate in its institutions. This is to be promoted through initiation into traditions and rituals in which the fundamental principles of reason are implicit. Peters sees this as the paradox of moral education: “the palace of reason has to be entered by the courtyard of habit” (1966, p. 314). This implies practical peer-group experience of a democratic way of life, with its emphasis on discussion and the use of reason, and built-in standards such as those of relevance, consistency and impartiality. The attitudes underlying this way of life are an overall concern for truth, respect for persons and a feeling of fraternity for others as persons. The fundamental principles underlying such a life are those of fairness, tolerance and the consideration of other people’s interests. Perhaps the most influential American philosophy on democracy and education was that of John Dewey. He criticised traditional approaches to education as rote learning or as the imposition of extrinsic truths on inert learners. He argued instead for a close link between education and meaningful experience, defining education as “that reconstruction or reorganisation of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience” (Dewey, 1916, p. 76). This implies a shaping and directing of experiences for learners. It also implies a notion of continuing education and the ongoing capacity for growth. This idea could only be applied to members of a society where there was a free exchange of ideas, and “adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests” (1916, p. 100). For Dewey, this meant a democratic society.

133

CHAPTER 8

His advocacy of a democratic approach to education is in parallel with his ‘pragmatic’ view of learning as constructing hypotheses and then testing them in practice. Dewey claimed that the experimental method was not limited to technical matters but “holds equally to the forming and testing of ideas in social and moral matters” (1916, p. 339). Dewey’s ‘democratic ideal’ in education involves the sharing of common interests, and free interaction and subsequent readjustments between social groups. A democracy, he suggests, is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of ‘conjoint communicated experience’. In this sense, democracy mirrors the process of science with tentative conclusions put to the test through social living and rational debate, and subsequently accepted or reworked as necessary. By way of clarification, Dewey provides a number of contrasts for his democratic conception of education. First, he points to the Platonic model of education involving a teleological ideal (the ultimate good), a model he criticised for its stratifying effect on society. Second, he outlines the individualist ideal of the eighteenth century: one that promoted the free development of individuality, an interest in social progress, the ideal of a cosmopolitan humanity, and a faith in nature and the natural sciences. His third contrast is with the nineteenth century rise in nationalism and the subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the State, a situation in which the aim of education was the formation of the ‘citizen’ rather than the ‘man’. For Dewey, education is a social process, with the value of a group’s social life measured in two ways: first, by the extent to which the interests of a group are shared by all its members; and second, by the fullness and freedom with which the group interacts with other groups. Such a ‘good life’ requires a democratic society, involving free intercourse and communication of experience, participation by all members on equal terms, and institutions flexible enough to readjust to changing circumstances. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder” (Dewey, 1916, p. 99). Although sometimes labelled ‘progressive’ in his formulation of education, Dewey argued explicitly against what he saw as the worst aspects of progressivism. He advocated a sound philosophy of experience as the basis for education, with children undergoing guidance into organised activity. He saw education as a social process, and argued for the inhibition of impulses through critical reflection. For Dewey, the “ideal aim of education” was “the power of self control” (1938, p. 64) – a form of ‘positive freedom’ with one’s immediate responses curtailed for a noble purpose. With the benefit of several decades of post-Deweyan contemplation, Gutmann (1999) is another advocate of a democratic approach to education, an approach that includes an ideal society empowering citizens to share in the formulation of educational policy, moderated by the principles of non repression and nondiscrimination. She sees these principles as preserving the intellectual and

134

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

social foundations of democratic deliberation. Willingness to deliberate, she argues, distinguishes democratic deliberation from mere self-interest or passive deferral to external political authority. Ongoing disagreement is, she suggests, inevitable in any free society, and requires the virtue of mutual respect as a “good faith effort to find mutually acceptable terms of social cooperation, not merely terms that are acceptable only to the most powerful, or for that matter to the most articulate” (Gutmann, 1999, p. xiii). Her theory of democratic education builds dialectically on existing theories rather than relying on self-evident logic or faith in a new belief system. With a typically liberal perspective on the need for diversity, she argues that expanding commercialism and intensified communication has rendered most societies increasingly multicultural. As individuals draw upon many cultures in living their lives, they therefore creatively constitute their identities against a background of interactive and continually changing cultural resources. Education, she argues, should acknowledge that cultural diversity and cultivate mutual respect. A democratic focus should “introduce students to competing perspectives and equip them to deliberate as equal citizens about why and when it is justifiable to agree to disagree over an issue (such as religious worship) and when it is morally necessary to decide collectively on a single substantive policy (such as racial and gender nondiscrimination)” (Gutmann, 1999, p. 308). Gutmann’s express goal is ‘conscious social reproduction’, requiring us to “educate all educable children to be capable of participating in collectively sharing their society” (1999, p. 39). Rejecting various conceptions of the role of the State in relation to education57, she theorises a ‘democratic state of education’: a model in which state, parents and professional educators all have important roles (but no exclusive rights) in cultivating moral character. Such a state facilitates participation in democratic politics, promotes choice among (a limited range of) good lives, and enhances our ability to share in the social groups from which we form our identity. Obviously, her version of a democratic state imposes some limits on individual choice and the proliferation of social norms under the rubric of cultural diversity. She defends this in two ways: first, children need to develop the character that feels the force of ‘right reason’ – a revulsion for bigotry, for example; and second, the good of children includes not just freedom of choice, but also identification with 57

Gutmann (1999) differentiates between three common constructions of the State in relation to education: the family state as a form of centralised authority in the interests of the social good; the state of families which places educational authority in the hands of parents; and the state of individuals as the (neo)liberal championing of opportunity for neutral choice, often at the hands of ‘neutral’ education experts. She finds all three insufficient, however, to work towards her educational goal of ‘conscious social reproduction’ (p. 39). The family state is too authoritarian and disallows competing notions of the ‘good’. It attempts to “wed knowledge of the good life with political power” (p. 42). The state of families relies on exclusive parental authority and is thus likely to limit social diversity – children, she argues, are no more the property of their parents than they are the property of the state, and so they must be exposed to ways of life different from their parents. The state of individuals, based on the notion that children’s learning should be unconstrained by parental of political authority, is an unliveable ideal for Gutmann, in that it ignores the competing ends of freedom on the one hand and virtue on the other.

135

CHAPTER 8

and participation in the good of their family and the politics of their society. This, she argues, cannot be imbued without some constraint. On the basis of the territory exposed so far in this chapter, the plethora of definitions of the term democracy is unlikely to leave us with an authoritative account of the relationship between democracy and education or an agreed settlement on what might be indicated by such phases as educational democracy, or democratic education. To do so would be to proffer yet another political position. Instead of seeking an ultimate account of democracy in relation to education, it is proposed to identify some similarities among the positions discussed so far, to be so bold as to suggest that these might reveal some of the assumptions underpinning democratic notions of education, and to suggest a Nietzschean perspective on such principles and assumptions. A NIETZSCHEAN CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRACY

The brief outline of Peters’, Dewey’s and Gutmann’s ideas touches on some significant themes usually explored in attempts to delineate a democratic approach to education. In general, the formula seems to include a process of initiation into certain traditions and rituals, a reliance on rational debate and deliberation, a respect for equality in the interplay between self and social cooperation, a strong relationship between education and lived experience, and a considerable presumption of freedom in the exercise of one’s rights and responsibilities. Although Nietzsche was an avid critic of democracy as he knew it, his philosophy encompasses some features of democracy in relation to education as discussed in the previous section. Among these are Peters’ idea that education should be available for all and that students should be initiated into traditions and rituals58, although Nietzsche took issue with the fundamental place of reason that Peters espouses, especially in relation to tradition and ritual. Dewey’s notion of ‘education as growth’ (1916) and the importance of experience (1938) in the educational process are both in keeping with Nietzsche’s perspective on life, although Nietzsche downplayed the degree to which the social group should take precedence. Both Nietzsche and Gutmann reject any passive deferral to external political authority59, although Gutmann’s advocacy of ‘collective sharing’ in political and educational decision-making is hardly Nietzschean. However, despite some apparent overlap between Nietzsche and these more recent thinkers, ‘democracy’, ‘community’, ‘society’ and ‘positive freedom’ constitute the herd behaviour that Nietzsche decried as a mechanism for individual subjugation, for the promotion of social utility and for ultimate nihilism. Although Nietzsche never published a critique of democracy per se, his writing contains many references to the term – mostly derogatory, while his philosophical project constitutes a condemnation of its constituent elements. For the purpose of analysis, these are now treated separately, although from Nietzsche’s perspective, 58

59

Nietzsche’s early lectures on education were strong on the necessity of being well versed in tradition, not only as an economic necessity for the State, but also as a grounding for the emergence of higher types. Nietzsche notes the connection between democracy and independence (WS §293).

136

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

they are closely interwoven and in many respects interdependent in his genealogy of moral life and his formulation of modern culture as “combating instinct”, and thus, as a “formula for decadence” (TI, The Problem of Socrates §11). The first element to be considered concerns the idea of democracy as a metanarrative. Political attempts to define ‘democracy’ (including those posing as neutral) usually tend to work towards similar ends – a precise definition of the term, an analytic account of its constituent elements, and a clear prescription for an ethical direction. Such attempts presuppose a singular ‘truth’ about democracy waiting to be revealed through verbal analysis or perhaps through active participation in a particular type of society. Democracy theorists see diversity less as a reconciled position than as a means to resolution. Held (1996), for example, advocates democracy as a means of keeping value conflicts open and negotiating difference, although his conviction that democracy is the overriding value is itself not negotiable. Nietzsche’s ideas about truth render such single solutions problematic. Breazeale’s (1990) account of Nietzsche’s early notebooks presents ‘truth’ not as singular certainty, but as ‘lies’ and ‘illusions’, or more gently, as ‘conventional designations’ useful in facilitating social life, and as giving human form to a hostile world in order to gain anthropomorphic mastery over life. Although Nietzsche did not self-consciously and overtly use the term ‘ideology’, his depiction of truth as metaphor presupposed a critical awareness of what would later become the sociology of knowledge and of what Foucault would frame up as ‘power/knowledge’. Truth then was not a metaphysical certainty, but useful illusion that served as a mask for the relations of power. Convictions are, Nietzsche suggests, “more dangerous enemies of truth than lies” (HAH I §483). An insistence on objective certainty masks feelings of weakness, limiting the possibility of agonistic diversity and promoting instead a single destination. Such closure is anathema for Nietzsche. He advocates instead a multi-perspectival view, “seeing the world with more and different eyes” (GM III §12). To posit democracy as a universal solution to political and ethical debate is to ignore the contested nature of what we call ‘truth’, to take the moral high ground, and to close down the possibility of new and different perspectives. We then run the risk, as Connolly (1991) points out, of acquiescing to such strategies as conquest, conversion, community or tolerance: strategies that impinge upon the individual freedom that underpins theories of democracy. A second concern for Nietzsche was the egalitarian view of human nature and its stultifying effect on the development of culture. From the time of his early lectures he criticised the way that outstanding people were subjected to the levelling effect of herd mentality, resulting in a culture based around the lowest common denominator. Consistent with this is his view of democratism as the “decaying form of the State” (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely Man §39). Such contempt for democracy is evident in his formulation of the French Revolution as the beginning of the “great slave rebellion” (BGE §203); with the democratic movement responsible for the decay of political organisation and the diminution of ‘man’.

137

CHAPTER 8

In its idealised form, the notion of ‘community’ promises equal access and ethical outcomes for its members, along with some consensus about how to proceed. It elevates life beyond a competitive struggle for survival and promotes positive freedom through mutual empowerment of its members. Such egalitarian concerns usually underpin normative calls for social democracy. However, the notion of community is value-laden. Following Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche, Caputo (1997) deconstructs the idea of ‘community’. Popular opinion might have it that the term derives from that Latin word for ‘one’ – unus (thus conjuring up a sentimental notion of spiritual ‘one’-ness or ‘unity’). However, the word ‘community’ does not rely on the secondary stem ‘unity’; but derives from the Latin munis – a fortification or wall, from which stem we also derive ‘municipality’ – a town with protective walls to keep the enemy out and to keep the citizens in. From this source we also derive ‘munitions’, ‘ammunition’, and ‘immunity’ – all evoking images of violence and the need for protection. With its genealogy reflecting our violent heritage, the notion of community might more accurately convey ideas of defensiveness or captivity rather than ‘one’-ness. Thus, the term might not signify a worthy spiritual and social ideal in an atmosphere of mutual support, but rather the necessity for fortification through solidarity, and thus for social cohesion to take precedence over individual aspiration. Irrespective of whatever truth value such etymology yields, the practice of community can be seen to limit the exercise of individual freedom. From the individualist (as opposed to communitarian) perspective, calls for equality in the name of democratic community can be criticised as a form of social control. The imposition of a levelling morality acts as a preventative for the emergence of genius and constitutes the egalitarian focus of Nietzsche’s slave rebellion or what he called the “herd instinct in the individual” (GS §116). His central objection to egalitarian movements, drawn from Aristotle, appears to be that they treat people as equal when they are really not so, an objection obvious in his attack on Rousseau: The doctrine of equality! … But there exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the termination of justice… ‘Equality for equal, inequality for unequals’ – that would be the true voice of justice: and what follows from it, ‘Never make equal what is unequal’ (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely Man §48). In contrast, he defends the contributions historically made by aristocratic societies, particularly the Romans and the Greeks. He admires those who were prepared to stand against the prevailing social, political and academic milieu, assert their own power, and rise above the mediocre. He holds the Romantic view that a strong spirit survives the worst and emerges stronger still, and that only the weak perish from hardship. It is this model that explains the promotion of great culture, ‘higher types’, and his idea of Übermensch. … a synthetic, summarising, justifying man for whose existence this transformation of mankind into a machine is a precondition, as a base on which he can invent his higher form of being…. He needs the opposition of

138

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

the masses, of the ‘leveled,’ a feeling of distance from them! he stands on them, he lives off them (WP §866). Nietzsche’s unpublished note here seems to support a view of Übermensch arising because of (rather than in spite of) hardship. However, his early eulogy on Schopenhauer (1974) argues that greatness arising through difficult times may have been greater still were it not for the unnecessary difficulties and hard times presented by the pseudo culture of the day. The third aspect of a Nietzschean critique of democracy concerns the exclusion of otherness in the democratic process. Since the time of Kant, the human subject has entertained ethical notions of autonomy through its rational essence. Western society prides itself on its aspiration to (and arguably its attainment of) liberal ideals, based on notions of freedom, equality and various notions of community. Pluralism and tolerance of diversity are values often associated with the theory of liberalism, although in the practice of liberal democracy, there is closure against difference and a silencing of the voices that signify plurality. Michael Peters (1996) labels as neo-conservative the notion of community advocated by Bloom and Finkelkraut, as they promote a vision of a common national culture in which all individuals, freed from their ethnic origins, their tribal histories, and their traditional cultural beliefs, participate in a modern democratic society. In this view, cultural pluralism and ethnic diversity are seen as a threat to group identity, group loyalties and group rights. It is, Peters argues, not surprising that: modern liberal discourse in its conception of citizenship has systematically excluded groups historically defined as Other. It has effectively pursued this end by promoting an idea of civic community that is both homogeneous and monocultural (M. Peters, 1996, p. 188). Neo-conservativism can be seen as underpinning the establishment of a market economy in certain targeted countries, even though such imposition may require military intervention60. The freethinking individual – the icon of liberal society – has risen to prominence within a monocultural, universal view of human nature as rational and free, presenting as autonomous chooser in the market economy and as responsible voter within national electoral systems. International capitalism and the use of military muscle to reinforce the installation of market economies reinforces the dominance of Western political thought and reduces the possibility of otherness through the eradication of difference. This international marketing of subjectivity can be seen as preservation of liberal ideals (albeit for ethnocentric purposes and through often illiberal means). The social-democratic ideal of universal citizenship, such as that proposed in ‘third way’ endeavours (Giddens, 1998) is an extension of Eurocentric ideals and has been criticised for failing to recognise and take account of group differences. Iris Young offers instead a notion of differentiated citizenship as “the best way of realising the inclusion and participation of everyone in full citizenship” (Young, 60

Regime change was a prime objective of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The rationale was to institute democracy as a political system and a ‘free market’ as an economic system.

139

CHAPTER 8

1997, p. 257). She argues that universal citizenship involves a trend towards uniformity and equal treatment, resulting in exclusions and/or homogeneity. She claims that inclusion or participation of everyone on a fair basis is only possible under three conditions: firstly, if there are specific mechanisms for group representation; secondly, if the rule of equal treatment is departed from in specific cases so as to ensure fair and just treatment, and thirdly, where the articulation of special rights exists that attend to group differences so as to combat oppression and disadvantage. However, Young’s ‘differentiated citizenship’ does not relieve us from the problems of exclusion, marginalisation and suppression of difference. It merely relocates them at a different level. Gutmann points out the difference between on the one hand, publicly recognising cultural differences; and on the other hand, “recognising collective rights of cultural groups to engage in practices that oppress anyone, including their own members, in the name of cultural difference” (1999, p. 305). With a conceptual shift from universal to differentiated citizenship, these same groups may become the oppressor rather than the oppressed. In the same way that groups are forced to comply with universal norms, individuals must now comply with group norms. The penalty for non-compliance is to lose one’s representation in political decision-making. The net effect is that individual interests may not be best represented through ‘differentiated citizenship’. Pragmatically of course, we need to impose some order on the world as a means of making sense of our experience, and education is part of the defining process. However let us not confuse that with any essential coherence or tendency towards power sharing in human nature. A plea for sharing the right to oppress is hardly a philosophical solution to the problem of individual freedom. Differentiated citizenship is really a political and pragmatic attempt to solve a philosophical problem. Liberal democracy excludes otherness in less obvious ways. There are restrictions on who has a voice in democratic systems – excluded from participation are those considered not old enough (children), not rational enough (the ‘insane’) or not moral enough (criminals), evoking an alignment with the rational autonomy of Kantian morality. Through its exclusionary mechanisms, liberal democracy is thus reproduced and preserved. From the perspective of liberalism, the promotion of liberal ideals is both ‘reason’-able and desirable, although in terms of rational process, it is self-referential. In this respect it shares some features with blind faith and with indoctrination: faith in reason as a totalising mechanism needing no external referent; and indoctrination through limiting the play of other possibilities and perspectives. Admittedly, in theory at least, liberalism involves toleration and respect for difference, yet its selfpromotion as a system through the machinery of democracy limits the possibility of difference, suggesting a form of ethnocentrism under the guise of rational and purportedly ‘neutral’ deliberation. The fourth criticism concerns the privileged place of reason in the organisation of human affairs. Kant is generally credited with having undermined the divine right of kings through his reliance on reason as a guide to moral thought and action. Although earlier philosophers (e.g., Locke, Descartes, Voltaire and even

140

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

Plato) had theorised the rational nature of man, such nature was inextricably linked to a divine realm. Kant diverged from God as the source of all good, with his conception of rational beings as living in a self-referential “kingdom of ends” (1988, p. 62) whose laws were the objective principles formulated and accepted by rational beings. Although Kant refers to this kingdom as ‘only an ideal’, it is the foundation of his system of morality and the source of human dignity. Since the time of Kant, the human subject has based its claim to a higher status and its ownership of a moral dimension on its rational capacity. Reason is accorded priority status in determining ethical principles, for it is both our rational capacity as human beings and our ‘religious’ (i.e., non-rational) belief in reason as transcendental that provide the basis of moral judgment. Kantian philosophy provided a new universal, beyond contradiction by rational agents and thus a universal prescription for man. The authority formerly enjoyed by the Christian ‘God’ lived on in the new rational ‘religion’, particularly in Kant’s noumena – the ‘true’ world as a world that cannot be challenged empirically. The similarity between Kantian rationality and Christian faith, which led Nietzsche to call Kant a ‘cunning Christian’, is apparent in a number of ways. First, in Kantian morality, there is a singular conception of reason underpinning the way we should live our lives. Such singularity used to be reserved for the deity – the ‘One’. Second, both systems are self-referential: just as God was accountable to God alone, reason itself is the mechanism for its own examination; leading either to an infinite regress, or to a ‘leap of faith’ – a non-rational belief in reason. Third, the elevation of the ethereal realm devalues the embodied world, the sensory and the instinctual. The biblical ‘heavenly realm’ has been replaced by the faculty of reason, signifying a move from salvation to enlightenment – or perhaps a synthesis: salvation through enlightenment. The rational basis for democracy presupposes the higher order of our rational capacity in much the same way that religious faith elevates the divine. Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols portrays such elevation as a ‘hostility towards life’, with the Church waging its ‘war against passion’ through the ‘excision’, ‘castration’ and ‘extirpation’ of such human qualities as sensuality, pride and lust for power. Such hostility is for Nietzsche necessary for those too weak-willed and too degenerate to moderate their own desire, those deficient of will, of sovereignty, of strength. By way of contrast, he offers the joyous image of a free spirit taking such pleasure in the power of self-determination and celebrating the joy of uncertainty: the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence (GS §347). The fifth criticism relates to Nietzsche’s rejection of a ‘higher’ realm for spiritual salvation, and his valuation of a social system according to how much it enhances life. Even though the idea of democracy provides a promise of harmonious social life, there is a chasm between theory and practice. Even prodemocracy commentators admit that there may be more promise than delivery.

141

CHAPTER 8

democracy is an impracticable form of government because it demands of the ordinary citizen qualities which only the few can possess. It must, in the end, represent the views of the 20 per cent who understand what 20 per cent means” (R. Peters, 1966, p. 304). Held also points out shortcomings in the institutions of liberal representative democracy: the disjuncture between the agencies which possess formal control and those with actual control, between the power that is claimed for the people and their limited actual power, between the promises of representatives and their actual performance, is striking (Held, 1996, p. 334). As a palliative for the disjuncture, Held advocates an ‘ideal normative agreement’; in other words, an agreement to follow rules and laws on the grounds that they are the regulations that would be agreed to in ideal conditions. It is not clear in the literature though how such an agreement might be reached. War, trade sanctions and international boycotts escalate from failed attempts to reach such agreements – even between countries that aspire to similar democratic ideals. Expecting normative ideals to resolve socio-political and religious difference is problematic to say the least. Within democratic nations, order is ultimately maintained through threat of enforcement, although power is more likely to be exercised through mechanisms of social exclusion as societal institutions determine who will have a say. Definitions of terms like ‘persons’, ‘citizens’ or ‘eligible voters’ exclude categories of people deemed not ready or not fit to be ‘persons’ (e.g., criminals, children, the insane), thus normalising institutional patterns of self-preservation. The difficulty lies not in the fact that such exclusions exist per se, but that they operate within a system that purports to represent all. Such marginalisation is usually justified in terms of ‘welfare rights’ or ‘best interests’, although the net effect of such exclusion is a reduction in participation. If the basis of exclusion is the idea that these people have insufficient knowledge and/or morality to participate independently, their sacrifice is really in the interests of system efficiency. DEMOCRACY TO COME

Nietzsche depicts the democratisers of nineteenth century Europe as desolate and monotonous with ‘grey dust’ in their brains from the building of metaphorical stone dams and protective walls (WS §275), although he acknowledges the need for democratic institutions as protection against future tyranny (WS §289). It is to a vision of some other ‘democracy’ that our attention now turns. A recent examination of Nietzsche’s thoughts in relation to democracy (Mangiafico, 2002) criticises those who would excuse Nietzsche’s anti-democratic remarks, or distance these remarks from the core of Nietzsche’s thought. Rather than search for ways to fit Nietzsche within the current democratic consensus, the argument is that we should be prepared to reshape ourselves in relation to someone who will disagree with us. To accept the enormity of this task is far more in keeping with the

142

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

Nietzschean canon, in which dissonance is not to be resolved but to be lived with as a challenge and as an opportunity to grow. Within Nietzsche’s scathing criticism of anything democratic or humanitarian, lies a beacon of hope in his promise of a ‘democracy to come’ (WS §293), a motif developed more recently by Derrida, as “an openness to the future and [an] openness to the other” (Derrida, 2001, p. 180). Although having something in common with what we understand by democracy today, Derrida is clear that such a vision is “reducible neither to the contemporary reality of 'democracy' nor to the ideal of democracy that informs such a reality” (Derrida, 2002, p. 234). In Derrida’s view, Nietzsche’s critique is aimed at a particular form of democracy, so he does not consider Nietzsche an “enemy of democracy in general” (ibid.). Johnston (2001) attempts an examination of Nietzsche in relation to democracy and education, although his vision is short in a number of ways, including his limitation of ‘democracy’ to how it is practised in America. Equating education with ‘curriculum’ and ‘instruction’, he sees the educator’s role as a ‘task’ to ‘accomplish’ (p. 89). He also treats the ‘social’ as a conglomerate with no possibility of freedom or individual emergence, with “…no question of a reconciliation between the realms of the individual and social” (p. 89). Inside such limited parameters, Johnston concludes that with “no shared methods of instruction, no curricula that can be perused, no contents to be discovered … there is only the Nietzschean individual”. Such a formulation is, however, unhelpful as a normative educational philosophy and blind to the possibilities of Nietzsche’s Übermensch as embracing ‘otherness’ in an attitude of adversarial respect. Nietzsche’s project is very much in the realm of the social, engaging to a large extent the democracy of his day61. As Sassone (1996) points out, the Nietzschean democratic project is not solipsistic or narcissistic. In any of Nietzsche’s voices, he teaches that we are in a social relationship, a give and take with others, as soon as we have language. He was not prepared to simply ignore the social in favour of some theoretical notion of ungrounded individuality. To equate education with curriculum and instruction might be a suitable formula for training of the masses, for the promotion of Bildung, and for inculcating traditions, but education for Nietzsche’s ‘free spirits’ requires far broader horizons and higher reaching goals. The ‘higher man’ would learn in spite of curriculum and instruction, with the locus of control firmly inside an active learner, rather than in an instructor with a ‘task’ to perform. Although Nietzsche might agree with the idea of the ‘social’ as a conglomerate (the ‘herd’), he would not be satisfied with Johnston’s deterministic view that there is no possibility of a ‘reconciliation between the realms of the individual and social’. Nietzsche’s Übermensch is just such a reconciliation and one which Nietzsche envisaged from the time of his early essay on Schopenhauer as one who achieved greatness by overcoming extreme hardship in his social world. A Nietzschean ‘take’ on democracy and education must then go further than myopic introspection. 61

There are many barbed comments throughout Nietzsche's work about both Hegel and Bismarck in relation to the German State. In addition, his major work, the On the Genealogy of Morals is almost a total focus on the social and populist development of morality.

143

CHAPTER 8

Other commentators try to defend democratic readings of Nietzsche by appealing to the familiarity of their own contemporary cultural practices. Hatab (1995) for example sees a form of agonistic contest in the practice of political speech-making where one candidate wins in the vote for government. However, Nietzsche’s hope for the emergence of greatness is not well served by the short lived nature of such contests, in which opponents are defeated and summarily eliminated, and successful politicians are erased from the landscape and forgotten after a season or two in power. This is hardly a model of the agon where opponents are valued and power enhanced. It also does not reflect Nietzsche’s contempt for politicians: The entire West has lost those instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which the future grows… The décadence in the valuating instinct of our politicians, our political parties, goes so deep that they instinctively prefer that which leads to dissolution, that which hastens the end (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely Man §39). Appel (1999) mounts a reactionary critique of any efforts to draft Nietzsche’s thought into the service of radical democracy, claiming that anybody associating him with emancipation and progressivism ignores his patently inegalitarian political project. Rejecting Foucault’s approach to the interpretation of texts62 as ‘cavalier’, Appel holds uncompromisingly to the image of Nietzsche as illiberal and anti-egalitarian, concerned with rank and hierarchy, and thus refuses to accept any reading sympathetic to a radical democracy. Appel claims further that postmodern theorists attracted to the notion of agonistic democracy are engaged in dressing up Nietzsche’s politics with their own liberal democratic scruples. Appel’s contention is that there are plenty of other thinkers with less dubious credentials who could provide inspiration without the bending and twisting necessary for a progressive appropriation of Nietzsche. “A Nietzsche thus sanitised or domesticated can teach nothing that could not be learned directly from dozens of contemporary writers” (Appel, 1999, p. 5). Such a refusal, however, misses the poetic challenge, the linguistic elegance and the rich variety of expression that Nietzschean scholars enjoy. Of course Nietzsche’s political message could have been expressed more economically, and further clarity achieved through explicit representation of the logical and the familiar in representing political relationships. Presumably, one could also argue for the elimination of all artistic expression and a sterile and monocular interpretation of our social world. The fact that many writers do seek inspiration in Nietzsche’s writing for all sorts of political projects might indicate a richness that Appel is missing in his ‘either a democrat or not’ binarism.

62

Although Foucault adopted a Nietzschean perspective in many aspects of his philosophy, there is controversy over Foucault’s statement: The only tribute to thought such as Nietzsche's is precisely to use it, to make it groan and protest. And if the commentators say that I am being unfaithful to Nietzsche, that is absolutely of no interest (Foucault, 1980, pp. 53-54)

144

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

Underlying Appel’s position is an assumption of a broad consensus among all contemporary political and moral philosophers63 that all human beings are of equal moral worth and are equal bearers of certain basic rights, and that one of the main tasks of the political community is the defence and promotion of these rights. From this perspective, Nietzsche’s usefulness to democratic theory is to enforce egalitarians to defend their concern for the weak, their belief in equal moral worth of all human beings and their desire to preserve and promote liberal institutions. Appel sees such utility as having “antidotal benefits” – a form of innoculation along the lines of Nietzsche’s own claim that “what does not kill me makes me stronger” (TI, Maxims and Arrows §8)64. But in using Nietzsche this way (albeit as a whipping post), Appel is committing the very sin that he abhors – using Nietzsche to advance the antithesis of his whole philosophical project – the egalitarian ideal of democracy. However, there is a more serious criticism of Appel’s position. The ‘broad consensus’ to which he refers relies on Dworkin’s suggestion that “every plausible political theory has the same ultimate value, which is equality” (Kymlicka, 1990, p. 4). In this view, the interests of each member of the community matter equally and each citizen is entitled to equal concern and respect. The trouble is that the ‘egalitarian plateau’ is achieved by excluding all that don’t agree – including Nietzsche – from the realm of ‘plausible’ political and moral philosophy. Denigrating Nietzsche’s writing as ‘embarrassingly elitist rantings’ (Appel, 1999, p. 5) does little to engage with any worthwhile ideas that emerge in the rich body of literature emanating from the growing academic interest in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Small (2001), for example, devotes a whole book to the emergence of Nietzsche’s originality and creativity in dialogue with other thinkers, and shows quite clearly that it is plausible. It is not clear how Appel’s technique of selective exclusion might deal with various snatches of Nietzsche that are explicitly humanitarian in their focus; for example, Nietzsche’s conjecture that the desire for equality might express itself either in drawing everybody to the lowest level (his more common view of egalitarian sentiment), or as “a desire to … raise oneself and everyone else up … through recognising their virtues, helping them, rejoicing in their success” (HAH I §300). In his vigilance against any acceptance of Nietzschean thought, Appel is keen to reject Kaufmann’s sympathetic tidying up of Nietzsche for Anglo-American sensibilities. His rejection goes as far as accepting the ‘new Nietzsche’ of poststructuralist thought65 in its laying bare of morality and truth as grand narratives, but only insofar as it undermines Kaufmann’s project. It is ironic that Appel embraces the deliberate uncertainty of poststructuralism while at the same time espousing equality as the ultimate premise in political philosophy. Adding to the irony, Appel dissociates himself from any portrayal of Nietzsche as a relativist by identifying a strong ethical-normative component in Nietzsche’s mission as an 63

64

65

Here, Appel cites Ronald Dworkin and Amartya Sen, but relies most heavily on Kymlicka’s (1990) Contemporary Political Philosophy. Appel backs up his claim here with a footnote to point out numerous instances in Nietzsche’s work where he insists on the value of enemies. His notion of ‘poststructuralist thought’ specifically refers to Derrida and Foucault.

145

CHAPTER 8

educator – albeit an “educator of sorts” (Appel, 1999, p. 12). Appel’s real battle though, stems from his summary dismissal of Nietzsche for not engaging on the egalitarian plateau. Without a common aspiration to equality as the overriding concern (and clearly, Nietzsche does not aspire to equality), we are left with conflicting appeals to incommensurate values – not ‘implausible, elitist ranting’. In spite of Appel’s rejection of Nietzsche as the herald of any sort of democracy, the closing section of this chapter argues that Nietzsche’s ideas do, in fact, signal the possibility of a democracy to come; a democracy that goes beyond the binary opposition between individual and community66 and leaves behind the unitary rational ego as prime mover. A poststructural view of the subject suggests instead a social identity, not as ‘already-existing’ but ‘in-process’ and often fragmented. With the subject as contingent, and the relation between individual and community problematic, Iris Young invites an “openness towards unassimilated otherness” (1986, p. 22), formulated as a ‘politics of difference’ – a project of inclusive democracy that means: explicitly acknowledging social differentiations and divisions and encouraging differently situated groups to give voice to their needs, interests, and perspectives on the society in ways that meet conditions of reasonableness and publicity (Young, 2000, p. 119). A politics of difference is suspicious of universalist, foundationalist and essentialist thinking and treats homogeneous constructions of individual or community identity as exclusionary. It emerges as “the new desideratum for understanding the complex nature of oppression in education and the way in which multiple and contradictory subjectivities and identities are socially constructed” (M. Peters, 1995, p. 55). For Cornell West, its function is: to trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the name of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity; to reject the abstract, general and universal in light of the concrete, specific and particular; and to historicise, contextualise and pluralise by highlighting the contingent, provisional, variable, tentative, shifting and changing (West, 1990, p. 19). Advancing the theme of difference within a ‘democracy to come’, Chantal Mouffe (1988) proposes a ‘radical democracy’ which entails giving up the abstract idea of a universal human nature. She advocates instead a new kind of articulation between the universal and the particular, acknowledging heterogeneity and leaving

66

Peters’ (1996) examination of culture and democracy points out that the debate between liberals and communitarians has been tied on both sides to the binary logic of modernism. Each side seeks to privilege one term or concept that the other seeks to deny. Liberalism, in its commitment to an ideology of individualism, privileges the individual as the ultimate unit of analysis and thus devalues any identity or rights grounded in group loyalties or tribal affiliations. Communitarians, on the other hand, argue that our identity depends on our membership in a community of shared values and meanings – a collective that Peters argues can be undesirably utopian and politically problematic in its ignoring of endemic alienation and violence. The communitarian ideal privileges unity over difference, and in turn, devalues heterogeneity and pluralism.

146

NIETZSCHE, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

room for plurality and conflict. The human subject is thus shifting and changing in dialogue with its social surroundings: we are in fact always multiple and contradictory subjects, inhabitants of a diversity of communities (as many, really, as the social relations in which we participate and the subject-positions they define), constructed by a variety of discourses and precariously and temporarily sutured at the intersection of those subject-positions (Mouffe, 1988, p. 44). The ‘democracy to come’, welcomed as “a porous, permeable, open-ended affirmation of the other” (Caputo, 1997, p. 123), is not about the power of the majority and the rights of minorities. It is not defined by participation or consensus or by insistence on rational clarity, but by respect for diversity: of beliefs, origins, opinions and values. Such diversity is necessarily a space of tension and conflict, of mutual recognition of the other, and cannot be reduced to a single principle. Instead, Touraine argues, we need to build an increasingly open world that is also as diverse as possible, since without unity, communication becomes impossible; without diversity, death prevails. We cannot, he argues, sacrifice one for the sake of the other: Democracy should no longer be defined as the triumph of the universal over the particularised, but as a set of institutional guarantees that makes it possible to reconcile the unity of instrumental reason with the diversity of practical experience, and to bring together social exchange and political freedom … (Touraine, 1997, p. 3). Democracy has a vital role in clearing the space for such reconciliation, a space within which individual lives gain unity and meaning. The myth of a unitary subject gives way here to a subject embedded within particular social or cultural loyalties, inevitably the site of tension and the best hope for any personal and collective opposition to domination and social control without requiring the total dissolution of society. Within this engagement, “every social actor must recognise that the other has the right to form projects and preserve memories” (Touraine, 1997, p. 186). Such a formulation is evident in Nietzsche’s preservation and veneration of one’s enemies as constitutive of one’s own strength, and as recognition of a totality of which we form a part, rather than an atomistic segregation of ‘self’. It is clear, then, that democracy as we know it in Western society today has little positive value in terms of Nietzsche’s philosophy. If anything, it might be defended as a means to an end, an “inspired collective preparation for the supreme artist … who will be able to apply himself to his real task only when these preparations have been fully carried out” (WS §275). In other words, democracy that existed during Nietzsche’s day was a protective mechanism rather than a final end – “quarantine arrangements” (WS §289) against the barbarism of the middle ages. It was depicted as a preparatory phase for a work-in-progress – the building of a stronger culture through the clearing of a space for individual creation. Nietzsche’s ‘democracy to come’, translated here into a ‘politics of difference’,

147

CHAPTER 8

signals the possibility of that new type of existence. Such a possibility is explored in the next chapter through the Nietzschean figure of the Übermensch.

148

CHAPTER 9

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

A CONTINUOUS THREAD

Nietzsche’s philosophy is generally considered to have undergone a series of transformations and thematic shifts throughout his writing life, although there are some consistent threads throughout his philosophy. This chapter argues that one such consistent thread is the notion of ‘overcoming’ inherent in his formulation of Übermensch. It can be described in terms of personal challenge and agonistic contest – incorporation rather than rejection of ‘otherness’. It provides a powerful metaphor for education, signifying a level of development beyond the currently known, and promoting life as subjective challenge and self-determination in relation to the social and cultural world in which one is embedded. A significant feature of the ‘overcoming’ process is that of cumulative building rather than binary rejection, so it is important to include the early influences on Nietzsche in any analysis of Übermensch, with particular reference to those educators he saw as significant in his own development. His early period was influenced by, and to some extent dedicated to, Wagner and Schopenhauer. Wagner was a key figure in the production of his first book The Birth of Tragedy, in which his focus was on Greek tragedy and art as providing the possibility of redemption from the nihilism of western culture. The early Nietzsche admired Wagner for his elevation of art and the culture of the preSocratic Greeks. Nietzsche believed Greek culture incorporated all aspects of life, not only beauty and tranquillity, but also the wild side of human nature, a wildness that could be indulged in and represented most fully through art: “the orgiastic element as it is lived in blissful raptures, in the mixture of pain and lust, of joy and horror, and in the self-obliterating drunkenness of Dionysian festivals. In them the conventional barriers and boundaries of existence are broken, so that the individual seems to melt into the totality of nature again” (Salomé, 1988, p. 39). The Dionysian was inherent in Schopenhauer’s formulation of the will – a blind, striving force as fundamental to life. Nietzsche’s early essays eulogised Schopenhauer as a genius, an untimely man and his educator: a figure to be emulated. Much later, Nietzsche was to indulge in strong self-criticism for believing that the world could be transformed through art, and for his naïve praise of both Wagner and Schopenhauer. However, his later attempts to distance himself can be seen as indicators of his own philosophical progression and do not detract from the intensity of his earlier admiration for these inspirational figures. In fact, one commentator (Salomé, 1988) suggests that his later philosophy was a return to

149

CHAPTER 9

his earlier views, albeit in a different form. His notion of the ‘releasing redeemer’ evolved from the ‘genius’, to later take the form of ‘scientist’ and then ‘philosopher’ as the heroic figure capable of transcending cultural limitations. Nietzsche’s middle period is often described as a positivistic phase, in which his quest for knowledge was a focus on reason and science, and a turning away from his earlier Romanticism. Rationality began to supersede genius as a desirable quality (DB V §548). His analysis of the development of genius suggests it is learnable through disciplined workmanship (HAH I §163); through painstaking attention to the constituent parts rather than a focus on the ‘effect of a dazzling whole’. He sees as erroneous belief or religious superstition the idea that genius is of supra-human origin, proposing instead that great spirits should acquire an insight into the nature and origin of their powers as merely particular configurations of purely human qualities. These qualities include undiminishing energy, resolute application to individual goals, great personal courage, and the good fortune to have had the finest teachers, models and methods (HAH I §164): Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became geniuses (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole (HAH I §163). This period of Nietzsche’s writing is characterised perhaps most famously for the emergence of his claim that ‘God is dead’ (GS §108; §125; §343; §344). The proclamation serves as a blatant challenge to fundamentalist thinking, as a negation of faith in some other life than this, as a rejection of any transcendental purpose for the universe, as a disbelief in eternal life, as a lack of faith in morality (GS §343) and as a ‘de-deification of nature’ (GS §109). The thought is put succinctly by Heidegger: That suprasensory world of purposes and norms no longer quickens and supports life. That world has itself become lifeless, dead … that is the meaning of the word ‘God is dead,’ thought metaphysically (Heidegger, 1977c, pp. 98-99). The death of God is emphasised in Zarathustra’s announcement of the overman as the ‘meaning of the earth’ and as an overcoming of humanity as we now know it: Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go (Z I, Prologue §3). Nietzsche’s theme of eternal recurrence also arises in his middle period, interwoven thematically with his Übermensch and his ‘death of god’ as an affirmation of the present world. Übermensch is the type of being that affirms life

150

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

(in this world) to the extent that he would will the recurrence of events ‘innumerable times more’ unto eternity: “How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?” (GS §341). Taken literally, the idea that history will be repeated in every minute detail implies a return of an identical self at some future point, leaving all creation of no lasting value – a concept difficult to reconcile with the notion of a creative conscious self who would recognise such a cycle and commit to overcoming previous limitations. Thus, the doctrine of eternal recurrence seems to presuppose a circular or cyclical notion of time, while the Übermensch formulation requires a linear concept of time – a “paradigm of logical incompatibility” (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p. 116). Klossowski (1997) therefore regards a literal interpretation of recurrence as an “absurd phantasm” (p. 67), raising the possibility of a ‘multiple alterity’ inscribed within an individual as a reconciliation for the idea of recurrence. Nietzsche allows room for such flexibility within the notion of ‘transitoriness’ in his notes about the enjoyment of productive and destructive force – explained as “continual creation” (WP §1049). An interpretation is that it is the cycle of creation rather than the specific creations themselves that is destined for eternal recurrence. The impracticability of eternal recurrence as a theory of metaphysics is itself a recurrent theme in Nietzschean scholarship, having been pointed out shortly after Nietzsche’s death. Writing in 1907, Simmel (1991) posits the case of three wheels rotating about an axis to show that a particular set of physical relationships between objects is not necessarily destined for a repetition at some distant future time. His interpretation has Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence not as descriptive of reality, but functioning instead as a hypothetical imperative to live in such a way that we would will to live that way forever, as if there was an eternal recurrence. Danto (1965) also debunks the logic involved in Nietzsche’s (not fully expounded) argument for the theory of eternal recurrence. Obviously, no empirical proof can be available for the theory since a previous cycle of events could not leave a trace for the next cycle to observe if both cycles resembled each other exactly. Danto draws further detail from Nietzsche’s unpublished notes to delineate and undermine the logical propositions that support the theory, those propositions being: (a) that the sum total of energy in the universe is finite; (b) that the number of states of energy is finite; and (c) that energy is conserved. Because the nature of a ‘state’ of energy is not defined, we are not to know if (b) is true. In addition, Danto argues, the truth of (a), (b) and (c) require that time is infinite, that energy has infinite duration, and that change is eternal. This collection of metaphysical and scientific theorems, along with the principle of sufficient reason, are, according to Danto, sufficient to underpin Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence – although the result is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics and the gradual cooling of the universe; thus Nietzsche’s belief that “mechanistic theory must be considered an imperfect and merely provisional hypothesis” (WP §1066). In contrast to the Christian doctrine of eternal damnation, Nietzsche’s own doctrine expounded in one of his unpublished notes was, “so live that you must desire to live again. This is your duty” (Danto, 1965, p. 212). This affirmation of

151

CHAPTER 9

life is central to Nietzsche’s amor fati, or love of one’s fate, “that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary… but love it” (EH, Why I am so Clever §10). Amor fati was Nietzsche’s formula for the greatness of a human being, for to celebrate what is with a sense of joy gives meaning to life in this world. Irrespective of the metaphysics of Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, this was in effect the message of his doctrine. With such an all-embracing perspective, the past can be reconstituted (or at least celebrated) as a product of the creative will, with redemption springing from the ability to “recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’” (Z II, On Redemption). Übermensch then, as the one who teaches and affirms the doctrine of eternal recurrence, carries awesome responsibility for life’s direction. Nietzsche’s Attempt at a Self Criticism – a preface added to his Birth of Tragedy fourteen years after the first edition – identifies the theme of morality that he grappled with in his later writing. He claims that even his first book was an attack on morality – in particular, Christian morality. His claim here is in keeping with the focus of his later works (e.g., Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The AntiChrist) in which he denies that there is a universal morality. In doing so, he uproots the self from any idea of ‘home’, and depicts genuine philosophers as those concerned with the creation of new values. His Zarathustra as a preacher of the overman, has been described as a manifesto of personal selfovercoming, and according to some commentators, an autobiographical account of his own philosophical quest. Lou Salomé, a younger contemporary and admirer of Nietzsche, published her rendition of his philosophy in 1888, while Nietzsche was still alive. Her Nietzsche provides a psychological perspective of a tormented philosopher, driving himself to intense physical extremes so that his deepest philosophy could arise from such passionate experience. In addition to the three periods outlined, she suggests an earlier development in what she calls Nietzsche’s ‘mental life’ that goes back to his days as a boy and his break with his family and institutional Christian belief. Although she acknowledges that his works rarely mention this separation, she regards it as the beginning of his changes because it already casts a light upon the uniqueness of his development. At one level, the idea that Nietzsche’s philosophy took different directions over time is not disputed here. However there were a number of themes that continued throughout his work. Salomé identifies four in particular, these being the Dionysian, decadence, the untimely, and the cult of genius (Salomé, 1988, p. 48). She suggests these continued to engage him (albeit in constantly changing guise) until the end. An important addition to this list – not altogether separate – is the notion of overcoming, personified in his formulation of Übermensch. Nietzsche’s ineffective attempts to distance himself from Wagner and Schopenhauer became a lifelong dialectical engagement, culminating in his admission that his eulogising of Schopenhauer was really his own history in the making (EH, The Untimely Ones §3). His attachment to great educators was an overcoming of herd mentality. His overcoming of his earlier fascination with his mentors was clearly not in the form

152

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

of expunging them from memory, but rather in the form of acknowledging his engagement with them and incorporating aspects of their strength into his own selfconstitution. His move beyond good and evil and his deconstruction of morality was a means of overcoming the egalitarian servitude of Christianity and the social mores of the time. It also provided fertile ground for the creation of new values as an activity for Nietzsche’s ‘philosophers of the future’. The continuous personal challenge that Nietzsche established for himself through his construction of worthy adversaries is the notion of education that is the focus of this chapter. The adoption of this focus is not to say that education is limited to personal challenge, for Nietzsche himself acknowledged some value in the technicist nature of much of what counted as education, and saw much academic endeavour as ‘scholarly grinding’. His notion of Bildung recognised the need for mass education although he also saw the need for special individuals to arise above mediocrity. In an unpublished note from 1888, he refers to the economic management of the earth that would soon be inevitable, with mankind as “a machine in the service of this economy – as a tremendous clockwork, composed of ever smaller, ever more subtly ‘adapted’ gears” (WP §866). Such a vision presaged much of what counts as education today in the form of employment-oriented skills training. In the degree of government scrutiny over educational institutions and the degree of control exercised through quality assurance mechanisms, it could be argued that education today is merely a metaphor for government. However, for Nietzsche, educational value is derived not from the ‘dwarfing and adaptation of man to a specialised utility’, but from his ability to rise up from his current predicament: The production of a synthetic, summarising, justifying man for whose existence this transformation of mankind into a machine is a precondition, as a base on which he can invent his higher form of being (WP §866). The focus on Nietzsche’s Übermensch is on his style of overcoming, how that constitutes personal challenge, and the way in which that can serve as a model of education. WHO WAS THAT ÜBERMENSCH?

Nietzsche’s themes of eternal recurrence and will to power are brought together in his Übermensch figure, first referred to explicitly in his Gay Science. Although not constituting a definition, overman is characterised therein as the individual who can “posit his own ideal” and “derive from it his own law, joys, and rights” (GS §143). His figure of the overman is contrasted with near-men, undermen, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons and devils. Given Nietzsche’s rejection of conformity and transcendental ideals, Übermensch then becomes a metaphor for a plurality of norms in keeping with his later announcement of the death of god, an undermining of the doctrine of one normal human type, and the possibility for multiple perspectives. In fact, Zarathustra is later to announce, “Dead are all gods: now we will that overman live!” (Z I, On the Gift-Giving Virtue §3). Nietzsche’s process involves admiration, emulation, and then a moving beyond the images of people, real or imaginary, that he considers worthy of being our

153

CHAPTER 9

educators. In this process, we learn to become who we are, or who we can be. The desire to relive each moment forever was possible only for a being that experienced and celebrated life to the full. Finding Nietzsche’s Übermensch is not a simple task, and given that he never defined an actual specimen for us, we are left to determine possibilities from the literature that preceded Nietzsche, from his references to Übermenschlich qualities of the people he admired, and from his depiction of his own physical health and socio-cultural predicament. Inherent in Übermensch is the notion of continuous and dynamic overcoming of the currently known; of something beyond what is currently known as ‘man’: “Man is something that shall be overcome … a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss” (Z I, Prologue). We are not given direct examples although several individuals are referred to in his work as having many Übermenschlich qualities. As models or types of man, his early writing offers three inspirational images: the man of Rousseau, full of fire and ready for revolution; the man of Goethe, committed not to action but to contemplation; and the man of Schopenhauer, who reconciles action and contemplation, voluntarily giving up comfort and happiness in life, courageously taking on the suffering of life and frequently remaining misunderstood. All three provide some insight into the way in which the human condition might be overcome and new values created. Nietzsche’s early admiration for Schopenhauer as his educator relied on qualities that he later attributed to Übermensch, in particular the ability to transform life’s hardships through a cheerful disposition. Notable among the three images of man was Goethe: He did not sever himself from life, he placed himself within it; nothing could discourage him and he took as much as possible upon himself, above himself within himself. What he aspired to was totality; he strove against the separation of reason, sensuality, feeling, will… he disciplined himself to a whole, he created himself (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely Man §49). Nietzsche’s Übermensch has been interpreted by some critics as one that advocates a master-slave society and justifies totalitarian government. Kaufmann is one of many to refute this connection and attribute it to misinterpretation. Tyranny over others is not part of Nietzsche’s vision, although Kaufmann suggests the failure to indulge in it is no virtue unless one has the power to become a tyrant and refrains deliberately (1974, p. 316). An unpublished note from Nietzsche posits as the ideal ‘the Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul’ (WP §983), a phrase that represents for Kaufmann the “very heart of Nietzsche’s overman, capable of both sympathy and hardness” (WP §983n). Kaufmann rejects the interpretation of Übermensch as a model of totalitarian domination, devoting a whole chapter of his (at the time) definitive text on Nietzsche to a refutation of the idea that Nietzsche was a precursor to Nazism. He notes in particular that Nietzsche did not consider the Germans a ‘master race’ (p. 284); that various writers (Oehler, Bäumler and Hartle) misrepresented and misquoted Nietzsche for their own ends (pp. 290-1); that Nietzsche explicitly rejected nationalism and race hatred (p. 295); and that Nietzsche’s occasional comments on ‘blood’ and ‘breeding’ were metaphoric rather than biologistic –

154

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

more commonly found in his unpublished notes than elsewhere (pp. 305-6). Oscar Levy, prefacing a 1921 collection of Nietzsche’s private letters, reminds us that Nietzsche was, in fact, half-Polish and an outspoken critic of German nationalism, citing as examples Nietzsche’s view of Prussia as “a power full of the greatest danger for culture” (Levy, 1985, p. viii) and the Germany of his time as “the stupidest, most depraved and most mendacious form of the German spirit that has ever existed” (ibid.). Danto (1965) too, refutes the reading of Nietzsche’s Übermensch as a “return to the instinctual swamplands of the primitive psyche” (p. 194) and a “seeming nostalgia for the Neolithic freedom of the happy brute living in unaware animal felicity” (p. 187). He also rejects images of a physical superman or dominating overlord, suggesting that the prefix ‘Uber’ connotes ‘over’ in the sense of ‘over the hills and far away’ rather than taking orders from someone ‘over me’; in other words, a sense of beyondness rather than superiority. As a defensible ethical project for education, then, Übermensch is interpreted as overman rather than superman; a symbol of the ‘repudiation of any conformity to a single norm’; the ‘antithesis to mediocrity and stagnation’: the ‘Dionysian’ man who …has overcome his animal nature, organised the chaos of his passions, sublimated his impulses, and given style to his character … a spirit who has become free (Kaufmann, 1974, p. 316). Kaufmann provides a brief genealogy of the idea of Übermensch, tracing similar concepts back to as early as the second century A.D. with the hyperanthropos found in the writings of Lucian. Übermensch also featured in the work of Heinrich Muller in 1664. In other words, Nietzsche did not invent the term so much as appropriate it to his own philosophy. Later literary occurrences of Übermenschen are also noted, particularly in the work of Goethe, whom Nietzsche was very familiar with. Kaufmann concludes that the English term ‘superman’ does not sufficiently capture the connotation for Nietzsche, in that it fails to incorporate an element that was important to Nietzsche – the idea that the Übermensch also involved the control over spirits (Kaufmann, 1974, p. 307). In clarifying the nature of the overman, Nietzsche posits other types; on the one hand his antithesis – the last man: “the extreme representative of weakness, a man frozen at the level of passive nihilism, totally reduced to a ‘herd animal’, rendered uniform, equal, and level – the man who has found happiness” (Haar, 1984, p. 24). Finding the “little garden of happiness” (HAH I §591) that accompanies being resigned to small or moderate achievements is, for Zarathustra, a ‘wretched contentment’ – the “hour of the great contempt… in which your happiness, too, arouses your disgust” (Z I, Prologue §3). On the other hand is the Higher man, searching for scientific knowledge and therefore still the prisoner of an ideal. Although engaged in more worthy endeavour, for Nietzsche, the higher man is also engaged in a nihilistic quest in that he posits a goal outside life itself. The higher man’s struggle is recognised as ongoing, with failure imminent: “The higher its type the more rarely a thing succeeds” (Z IV, On the Higher Man §15), although there can be no substitute for the ongoing commitment. In contrast to the current (and not yet good enough) state of man, Zarathustra is very clear about the

155

CHAPTER 9

importance of Nietzsche’s overman: “I have the overman at heart, that is my first and only concern” (Z IV, On the Higher Man §3). In 1907, Simmel identified the overman not as a rigid structure with an absolutely determined content, but as “indicating the human form that is superior to the present real one … independent of all the limits typical of reality” (Simmel, 1991, p. 175). This interpretation is supported by Nietzsche’s own reflection that the word ‘overman’ designates a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to ‘modern’ men (EH, Why I Write Such Good Books §1). Although it was mid career before Nietzsche formulated his notion of Übermensch, the very act of establishing such a value constitutes Übermenschlich activity, suggesting that he was already living his ideal before his conceptual clarification of the idea. According to Salomé’s rendition, Nietzsche’s Übermenschlich tendencies began in relation to his family, to German culture, and to the god of his youth. In fact, his life’s philosophical work can be seen as a series of attempts to overcome – not only the nihilism of Western culture and his own ill health, but his previous philosophical endeavours as well. This is very clear in his later appending of prefaces and commentaries to his earlier works, and especially so in the stern self-criticism of Ecce Homo, where he blatantly qualified, undermined and/or refuted some of his earlier major works. Lovitt (1977) makes a worthwhile contribution to the genealogy of Übermensch as well, noting that the term is often generally translated as ‘superhuman’, ‘demigod’, or ‘superman’. He contends that the term ‘overman’ provides a better connotation than ‘the overman’ in that it refers to generic man – to humanity, rather than any particular individual. Lovitt suggests Übermensch might be translated “man-beyond” (p. 96), for overman stands in contrast with what we know of man up until now. However it would be wrong to talk of an ‘ideal’ man since that would posit a pre-determined formulation, whereas Nietzsche’s path to greatness shunned idealism in favour of present reality. It is this ‘going beyond’ that constitutes the challenge for education. Perhaps as close to a definition of Übermensch as anywhere is Nietzsche’s poetic portrayal of Goethe’s character: A strong highly cultured human being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who, keeping himself in check and having reverence for himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, who is strong enough for this freedom; a man of tolerance not out of weakness, but out of strength, because he knows how to employ to his advantage what would destroy an average nature; a man to whom nothing is forbidden, except it be weakness…. A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything is redeemed and affirmed (TI, Expeditions of an Untimely man §49). WHAT IS THAT ÜBERMENSCH?

With some idea of the development of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, it is now possible to examine a few functional aspects of that same figure that help to explain the

156

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

notion of education at the heart of this book. The discussion focuses on the ontological relationship with human ‘being’, the pathological relationship with Nietzsche’s own state of health, the historical relationship with evolution, and the ethical relationship with Kant’s noumenal world. A focus on Übermensch is not so much an examination of an ontological state, as a form of critical engagement with social and cultural mores that shape educational development, an engagement easily interpreted as Nietzsche’s early articulation of subjectivity. It constitutes a countermeasure to the nihilism of modernity after the death of god – a move towards creating value in a celebration of this life; a celebration in which the creator is secure, independent, and highly individualistic, with a healthy balance between passion and reason. The nihilistic condition of human existence is captured in Nietzsche’s book title Human, All Too Human. In contrast, he uses the term ‘human, superhuman’ to refer to our ‘true self’ – a spirit of overflowing abundance, who “plays naïvely … with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine” (GS §382). According to Nietzsche, the unthinking masses conform to tradition, and subject themselves to an other-worldly morality as a means of diminishing their involvement in this life. The ‘other world’ is a realm constantly lambasted by Nietzsche, whether it be the heavenly after-life of Christian belief, or Kant’s formulation of morality in its dependence on the world of reason unattainable in the phenomenal world. “If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the ‘Beyond’ – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity” (AC §43). Haar (1985) is quite clear that Nietzsche’s philosophy is not a false hope of a new world order at some stage in the future, since there will always be gregarious humanity subsisting and prospering by stabilising itself at the nihilistic level of the search for happiness. Nevertheless, there is room for some individuals to surpass known man. In a constant state of transition, the highest possible man, the ‘legislator of the future’ – the man who lays down the law, submitting himself to it as well – amounts to only a step towards the overman. Although this distinction is reasonably clear, it constitutes an irreconcilable problem for Haar, in that the overman “stands in opposition to the identification of man with himself as the highest living being” (Haar, 1985, pp. 25-26). Heidegger achieves a partial reconciliation by suggesting that Nietzsche’s Übermensch refers neither to man such as exists until now, nor a type of man who tosses humanity aside. Man’s identification of himself – his identity – is not synonymous with his being, but super-dimensional. With the possibility of a gap between who we are and who we can be, Heidegger suggests that Übermensch surpasses man as he is up to now, “for the sole purpose of bringing man-till-now into his still unattained nature, and there to secure him.” (Heidegger, 1985, p. 67). Zarathustra is quite clear in his teaching – “I teach you the overman” (Z I, Prologue §3). Übermensch is always a bridge and not an end. It is a process rather than an endpoint – a journey rather than a destination. With this in mind, the ontological problem of whether Übermensch can exist is not a huge concern. The critical question becomes how do we work towards this Übermensch. Based on the

157

CHAPTER 9

analysis so far, a focus on Übermensch is not about human being as such, so much as a “permanent critique of our historical era” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 42). The second aspect to be examined in relation to Übermensch is the importance Nietzsche attaches to the notion of overcoming adversity. His personal struggle and self-overcoming typifies his formulation of the ‘overman’ concept, with his friend and confidante, Lou Salomé, suggesting that his philosophy may have been driven by a lifelong personal struggle against illness, against convention and against his eventual insanity. She argues that his illness necessitated taking himself as the material of his thought, that his health was ever-present as an issue, and that his philosophical world picture derived from the driven suffering of his own inner being. If all this were otherwise, she claims, perhaps he would not have been able to accomplish things so individualistic and unique. What she noted was a “compulsion” (1988, p. 56) toward self-isolation and torment as a means of generating ideas: The philologist tangentially and temporarily draws on the inner person only as required by the solution of a problem. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the concern with a problem means above all, insight, to allow himself to be shaken to his depths, to be overwhelmed. To be convinced about the truth of a matter, meant for him “to be thrown in a heap,” as he said. He took up a thought or idea as one takes up something fateful, and which enthralled his entire person” more than thinking an idea through, he lived it with passion and with such measureless abandon that it exhausted him. And, like something fated and which has played itself out, the ripened thought fell away from him. Only when sobriety ensued after each excitation did he allow his hard-won knowledge to work upon him in a purely intellectual way; only then did he pursue that knowledge with a calm and probing rationality. His notable drive for change in pursuing ideas in the realm of philosophical knowledge was conditioned by the tremendous drive for new emotions of a spiritual sort; and so, complete clarity was always only the companion of surfeit and exhaustion (Salomé, 1988, p. 34). Although the pathological story is not accepted as sufficient explanation for all of Nietzsche’s ideas, the severity and ongoing nature of his health problems were clearly an influencing factor in his focus on life and health, and on the concept of facing challenge and overcoming difficulties as a means of realising one’s own strength. A third aspect worthy of consideration is the relationship between Übermensch and Darwin’s famous theory of the origin of species. To the degree that Übermensch might be considered a continuous evolutionary process, Nietzsche could be accused of being a social Darwinian. Nietzsche certainly knew of Darwin and there are explicit references in Zarathustra to the relationship between ape and man. However, adopting an evolutionary model would imply a teleological view of progress with more value attached to each ‘better’ stage achieved, since Darwin’s theory held that “as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowment will tend to progress towards perfection” (Darwin, 1966, p. 489). Thus, it is by virtue of the final goal that a

158

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

string of historical changes might be construed as an ascending hierarchy of these stages rather than a mere succession of equivalent stages. For this reason, Simmel (1991) argues that Nietzsche is not Darwinian, suggesting that historical changes to culture points towards “accidental occurrences” (p. 11) rather than towards a prescribed purpose or a rational master plan for existence. Instead, he suggests, life is development and continuous flux, with each constitution of life finding its higher and meaning-giving norm in its next stage. Nietzsche’s ‘overman’ is nothing but a level of development which is one step beyond the level reached at a specific time by a specific mankind. In this argument, mere change becomes evolution in the evaluative sense only through a goal that has somehow been presupposed. Evolution presupposes an extrinsic purpose for life, so to agree with Darwin would be to “smuggle an absolute final goal through the back door” (Simmel, 1991, p. 7) and thus undermine the value that Nietzsche attributed to life itself. Nietzsche’s Übermensch then and his notion of overcoming has been a continuous thread throughout his philosophy. In some respects, it could be argued that the ethical prescription is similar to that presupposed in Western society and underpinned by Kant’s autonomous individual. One might argue that, like Kant’s moral realm, Übermensch is unattainable, unknowable in its essence, and beyond our current reality. Underlying both philosophies is also the importance of freedom. For Kant, morality is only possible where the individual is free. For Nietzsche, value also lies in the freedom to explore new possibilities for man. There is a fundamental difference however. For Kant, morality arises in, and is dependent upon, an individuated rational self, resulting in exclusion of otherness; particularly the Dionysian otherness that Nietzsche embraces as a driving force in life. Connolly points out that there is more to life than any official definition of identity can express, and that our possibilities for being are never exhausted or captured by our identity. This fugitive difference between my identity and that in me which slips through its conceptual net is to be prized; it forms a pool from which creativity can flow and attentiveness to the claims of other identities might be drawn. Because this abundance is in me but is neither me nor mine, perhaps it can help me to recognise and attend to the claims of the other in myself and to the claims of alter-identities (Connolly, 1991, p. 120). Connolly’s fugitive difference harbours the possibility for Übermensch to arise and challenge currently accepted truths. This type of challenge is more than rational inquiry and intellectual posturing. It incorporates rather than excludes otherness, embracing the impulsive side of human nature and the creative force immanent in the formulation of new values. This was for Nietzsche, the realm of Übermensch: the Dionysian man ... who has overcome his animal nature, organised the chaos of his passions, sublimated his impulses, and given style to his character – the man of tolerance, not from weakness but from strength,” “a spirit who has become free” (Kaufmann, 1974, p. 316).

159

CHAPTER 9

Nietzsche’s formulation of ‘overcoming’, although somewhat compressed in the summary above, challenges some common assumptions about human identity. Unlike the autonomous individual espoused by Kant, Übermensch is particular (not universal), impassioned (not just rational), in the image of man (not God), embodied (not spiritual), and worldly (not ideal or transcendental). Übermensch is social, interactive, and pragmatic; and – through agonistic contest and social engagement – incorporates otherness. The ethical content of such a formulation is a strong critique of the Kantian principles that underpin the dominant paradigm in educational ethics, highlighting the contestable nature of what counts as education, and the political context in which that contest is usually played out. The relationship between ‘self’ and society is complex, and to tip the balance in favour of a creative and unruly subject is to challenge the familiar edifices and societal controls of Western civilisation. ÜBERMENSCH AND EDUCATION

‘Education’ is not a label for any real entity in the world. Educational philosophers have been busy for years trying to establish universal definitions, asserting one version over another, or at least coming to terms with competing and often contrasting notions of what it is to educate. Some positivistic accounts describe education in terms of transmission of culture or the passing on of our heritage. Marxist accounts envisage education as liberation from ideological oppression, while postmodern accounts might prefer to view education as an irreconcilable contest of ideas. Governments in Western economies are heavily invested in ‘skills training’ for industry, with policy developers currently redefining education in terms of the ‘knowledge economy’ through the provision of financial incentives to shape up the educational direction of targeted sectors of the population67. A detailed history of thinking about what constitutes education or analysis of current philosophical debate is beyond the scope of this chapter, although it is important and sufficient here to acknowledge that what counts as education is a contested field, and that Nietzsche’s Übermensch provides an interesting perspective from which to examine some ethical aspects of education. If we were to consider Übermensch as an icon for education, some concepts must be excluded from what currently counts as ‘education’. The liberal ideal of the autonomous subject fails the screening test, in terms of its requirement to adopt universal laws, its insistence on rationality as the over-riding concern, and its separation of a moral will from subsequent action. There are problems, too, for communitarianism and other collectivist notions of society and culture, in their insistence that individuals defer to group norms and values. The ideals of democracy, justice and equality also fail to the degree that all individuals are

67

In New Zealand, $10,000 government scholarships were available for select groups: people from rural areas wanting to teach in rural schools; Maori or Pasifika people wanting to teach in early childhood, primary or secondary settings; and people wanting to teach primary or secondary subjects using Maori language. http://www.teachnz.govt.nz/scholarships/p1_scholarships.html (Accessed 6 August 2004).

160

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

accorded equal value, when Nietzsche’s Übermensch as creator clearly occupies a different status from the nihilistic last man. Obviously, the exclusion of some of these features might lead educators to reject Übermensch as an icon for education, in that it constitutes an assault on existing ethical premises. In that rejection, it might be argued that Nietzsche’s theory has little relevance to modern education as an ethical enterprise. However, for the purpose of inquiry, it may be useful to suspend such judgment to investigate the value of Nietzsche’s figure for educational philosophy, either within the existing Western canon, or in terms of what might be thought of as a Nietzschean philosophy of education. Nietzsche acknowledged some value in technicist education, and saw much academic endeavour as ‘scholarly grinding’. His notion of Bildung recognised the need for mass education although he also saw the need for special individuals to arise above mediocrity. His higher process involves admiration, emulation, and then a moving beyond the images of people, real or imaginary, that he considers worthy of being our educators. In this process, we learn to become who we are, or who we can be. Education for Nietzsche was not separate from culture; it was the role of culture to nurture the genius, who in turn might lead man to new heights. It was not possible for everyone to aspire to genius, but it was our educational duty to prepare the way for his development. Disciplined training in language was important then, as a means of learning one’s traditions, of withstanding the dictates of fashion or social pressure, and thus intensifying culture. This notion of education is perhaps best thought of in terms of the German words Bildung and Lehre in terms of training for the masses, providing instruction in the disciplines, and bringing human beings into culture. This image fits with Nietzsche’s image of the herd as a description of ordinary folk. But Nietzsche also had another (albeit related) notion of education. Rising out of the herd would be those uncommon individuals who had a higher destiny, exemplified in Nietzsche’s frequent depictions of the artist and the philosopher as the creators of new metaphors for life – as new incantations of the genius. These higher types needed to be unshackled from conformity and tradition, and able to exercise their creative abilities to the full. One such philosopher was Nietzsche himself, who looked to Schopenhauer as his mentor. Schacht (1995) points out the use of the German word Erzieher, in the title of Nietzsche’s essay about Schopenhauer, signifying a different sort of education in recognition of Schopenhauer’s significance for his own intellectual development, representing the way in which one thinker may be educated by another without thereby becoming a mere disciple: by challenging, provoking, stimulating, and inspiring, but above all by serving as an examplar, by what he sought to do and how he sought to do it. It is in this sense that ‘educator’ is here to be understood (Schacht, 1995, p. 157). Nietzschean education is involved with the task of making human beings human through developing their intellectual and creative abilities to the full. It advocates

161

CHAPTER 9

breaking free from conventionality, being responsible for creating one’s own existence, and overcoming the inertia of tradition and custom. The difficult task is to follow the path towards a higher, and as yet unknown, self. A necessary step is to examine our revered objects and educators of the past as a means of discovering how we have become who we are. Examining those held in high esteem was, for Nietzsche, the path to our ‘true selves’. Education, he claimed, should recognise and develop particular strengths in a pupil, while on the other hand, drawing forth and nourishing all aspects in harmony. The educative function seems to be one that is determined by the pupil, who adopts the challenge of achieving the standard set by his exemplar. One might also extract themes from Nietzsche’s work that with minor interpretation would be recognizable within existing educational discourse; for example, recognition and encouragement of individual excellence; the role of leadership, authority and responsibility; individual responsibility in setting one’s own goals; working together for a common purpose in the building of culture; a broadly based education for life rather than the learning of technical skills for the workplace; and the role of language in cultural development. The promotion of Übermensch as a notion then does hold some relevance to established traditions in educational philosophy, even if not all aspects suit all philosophies. Even if Nietzsche’s somewhat idealised human form may be desirable, it remains to be seen whether the defining features of that form are consistent with attempts to bring it about through education. It is suggested here that any notion of education has at base the function of making life better in some way, although there is disagreement over what the ‘better’ might be. Educational hope for the Übermensch relies at very least on the possibility of overcoming the nihilism of social conditioning, and more positively, on providing some aspect of value for a ‘better’ life. That hope depends to some extent on whether overcoming nihilism is possible, whether Übermensch provides access to anything that is of value, and whether that value can in some way ground a desirable social space. All three of these aspects are examined in the portrayal of education as a form of Heideggerian technology. THE CHALLENGE OF TECHNOLOGY

If we were to posit Übermensch as a goal for education, that very act would reconstitute education as a technology for the achievement of that goal. On the surface, there seems little wrong with such an idea, particularly if one is familiar with approaches to education that operate within the language of pre-specified outcomes, measurable goals and achievable objectives. A linear approach might attempt to identify some characteristic features of an Übermensch, and then set about devising teaching and learning strategies that would achieve the desired effect68. However, to call upon education in this way is to suppose that technology itself is neutral, and that we are alert to all the aspects of what we are doing as we 68

In effect, the NZQA national curriculum framework operates within such a model in the promotion of standardised units of learning, with pre-specified learning outcomes and standardised assessment tasks.

162

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

set about the process. This is not about technology merely as the intensification of industrial efficiency or the proliferation of computers throughout western society. The concern central to this criticism is Heidegger’s (1977a) question concerning technology. Technology stems from the Greek word techne, which refers not only to the activities and skills of the craftsman in manipulating tools and manufacturing products, but also more expansively to the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techne belongs to ‘bringing forth’, to poiesis. Techne also refers to knowing in a wider sense of being entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing is an opening up, a revealing. For Heidegger, it is in that revealing (or unconcealment) of something in its essence where truth happens. And yet, Heidegger argues, modern technology does not unfold into a bringingforth in the sense of poiesis. He sees instead that the revealing that rules in modern technology is a ‘setting-upon nature’, a challenging that calls for only certain aspects to reveal themselves, while others remain concealed. He uses the example of a river, which, dammed up for a power plant, becomes a ‘water power supplier’ deriving its essence from its utility as a resource for the power plant. In that mode, the river is revealed not in its essence but in its utility. Under modern technology, everything is ordered to stand by as a ‘standing-reserve’, where objects lose their character and are only partially revealed. In carefully selected vocabulary, Heidegger introduces the term Enframing to signify the process in which man is called upon to have the world ‘reveal itself in terms of standing reserve’. Enframing drives out every other possibility of revealing, conceals former ways of revealing, and in so doing limits the possibility of further or more original revealing of a more primal truth. The danger in Enframing is the possibility that man might be pursuing only the process of ‘ordering the world into standing reserve’ and deriving all his standards on this basis. The essence of technology as Enframing is ‘the way in which the real reveals itself as standing-reserve’, and is thus for Heidegger neither a mere human activity nor a mere means within such activity. Man himself ‘stands within the essential realm of Enframing’. Heidegger sees that the notion of Enframing in no way compels us or confines us to ‘push on blindly with technology’ or ‘to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil’. The hope of freedom lies in the thought that man becomes one who listens and hears, and not one who is simply constrained to obey. Freedom is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing there shimmers that veil that covers what comes to presence of all truth and lets the veil appear as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that at any given time starts a revealing upon its way (Heidegger, 1977a, p. 25). An important aspect of Heidegger’s theory is that man does not have control over unconcealment itself, and is in danger of himself being caught up in the standing reserve, especially if he is merely “staring at the technological” (1977a, p. 32). However, since man takes part in ordering and driving technology forward, he always has the possibility of being more than mere ‘standing reserve’. Through a

163

CHAPTER 9

watchful guardianship over the possible danger and through an awareness that each revealing conceals yet more, Heidegger credits man with the ‘saving power’ to restrain the inexorable nature of technology. Such a hope is reminiscent of Foucault’s notion of freedom as omnipresent wherever there is power, and the creative possibilities of individual resistance to all encompassing narratives. Provided that we watch what comes to presence in technology, instead of merely staring at the technological, man’s involvement introduces what Heidegger sees as the possible arising of the ‘saving power’ of man keeping watch over the revealing and concealing of all coming to presence on this earth. The danger in representing technology as merely instrumental is that we remain held fast in the will to master it, and that we miss the essence of technology. The hope for Heidegger lies in the realm of art, but only if art and its propensity for poesis can maintain its focus on questioning the true, for he says, ‘questioning is the piety of thought’ (ibid., p. 35) to which it might be added ‘and certainty its death’. It is true that educational rhetoric has often espoused high ideals such as ‘achieving one’s potential’ or ‘nurturing the whole person’. Such talk however, is becoming rare as education is increasingly being treated as a commodity for consumption. In a competitive market environment, educational institutions are called upon for the efficient production of qualifications, to provide more consumer choice, and to do so within curriculum choices that satisfy the needs of a predatory job market. Within a ‘knowledge economy’, education is called upon to produce saleable workplace skills in areas of knowledge that have commercial currency. Obviously, this type of development is easy to interpret in terms of Heidegger’s modern technology, as a ‘setting upon nature’: where only certain aspects are revealed. Education in such a setting features instrumental knowledge and is revealed as training, as skill development, and as the acquisition of useful qualifications. Such education, with its focus on uniformity of reproduction, may generate willing subjects for societal reproduction, but is obviously not sufficient for Übermensch. Less obvious however, but perhaps just as insidious, is the burden of expectation that education in a less instrumental form must face. Even the least commercial education can be revealed as instrumental when it is called upon to produce certain ends for society, for individuals, and in particular for Übermensch. Such hopes for education are embedded in modernist notions of renewal, in our cultural traditions, in language and in notions of ‘betterment’. As such, they may have some value in terms of poiesis as a ‘bringing forth’. Nevertheless, intensifying the value of Übermensch and accentuating the demand for the production of our cultural saviour issue a challenge to education; a Heideggerian ‘setting upon nature’ that again calls for only certain aspects to reveal themselves while others remain concealed. Although education in this mode might be shaped as a neutral technology for salvation from our predicament, Heidegger sees us as chained to technology when we describe it as merely a ‘means to an end’ or as just another ‘human activity’: We are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly

164

NIETZSCHE’S ÜBERMENSCH

like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology (1977a, p. 4). In spite of the liberal hope that education is the path to freedom and autonomy, this chapter has argued that the process of intentional education is itself a Heideggerian technology. Far from liberating one from ignorance, education structures and therefore limits the realm of possibilities for the development of self. By constituting the self in particular ways, it restricts the possibilities for Foucauldian freedom as resistance, and even structures the way that the aspiring Übermensch might construct a self-reflexive view. The problem for Nietzsche’s Übermensch is whether it is possible to arise in a counter-nihilistic stance from that compromised position. Übermensch, then, represents agonistic engagement with that essence and a continuous overcoming of the inherent challenge. The notion of Übermensch is perhaps the closest Nietzsche comes to an educational ideal, although without a perspective on culture and on education, the figure of Übermensch could easily become a simplistic caricature of unattainable perfection. If there is some truth in the revealing of education as technology, then we need to heed Heidegger’s warning about regarding it as something neutral, so that we can at least be aware of Enframing as its essence, and be awake to the ‘saving power’ inherent in reformulating our demands on education. Wrongly interpreted at times as a violent dominating force, Übermensch is a metaphor for an agonism of difference, a commitment to reflection and selfcreation, and an opportunity for individual genius to arise out of mediocrity. Übermensch refuses any social obligation arising out of tradition or group morality. Being grounded in the physical world rather than transcendent, Übermensch is also an expression of life and health. Nietzsche, like his Übermensch character, was opposed to the levelling effect of the prevailing practices of democracy and social justice, based as they were on a collective egalitarian morality. As an antidote to the nihilism of communal tradition, of social obligation and of unquestioning conformity, Nietzsche posited the notion of ‘untimeliness’, with his Übermensch rising above herd mentality, challenging accepted definitions, creating new values, ensuring sufficient social space for difference, and promoting ‘true’ education and culture. “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” was not a rallying cry for Nietzsche, but the recipe for societal decay and the destruction of individual greatness. The resurrection of humanity through the Übermensch redefines democracy as the promotion of independence and thus as “something yet to come” (WS §293). It signifies the undoing of liberal ethnocentrism, an interrogation of taken for granted assertions called ‘truth’, and the beginnings of a society that values challenge rather than stasis.

165

CHAPTER 10

CONCLUSION

This book has argued that, under the gaze of Nietzsche’s philosophy, traditional approaches to ethics do not provide sufficient basis for educational thought today. Liberal notions of autonomy rely on Kantian concepts beyond human perception; objectivist or positivist accounts of truth belie their interpretive stance; rationality is revealed as just another self-referential (albeit useful) belief system; while prevailing models of democracy and social justice prevent the emergence of individual difference and cultural excellence. Obviously, a Nietzschean account cannot posit an alternative certainty. The ‘death of god’ does not leave room for another supreme god (or transcendental truth). Instead, Nietzschean technology calls into question the ‘taken for granted’, and in a spirit of agonism reveals ethics as an arguable realm, with no point of refuge outside the world of experience. Given the multiple perspectives made possible by Nietzsche’s death of god, it would be inappropriate as a conclusion now to replace current conventions with an alternative prescription for a singular direction. Within a model of continual overcoming, multiple subject positions are possible (inevitable even), with the potential for each to rise above the mediocre, although there is no way of knowing in advance which ones will. In other words, there are no ideal types or Platonic forms that can be relied upon as templates for existence. Instead, there is the to and fro of agonistic engagement with forces that challenge and shape us, and a continuous interplay between those with whom we share the social space, and between the various images of the selves we would become. Nietzsche’s Übermensch constitutes a serious challenge to the technicist view of education presupposed by Western governments striving nostalgically towards utopian community or valiantly towards some mythical knowledge economy. These periodic cultural myths like equal opportunity or knowledge economy do much to inspire populations and stir them to political action. Such organising constructs lay down a ready-made challenge to human beings, and treat them as mechanised units for social production and economic utility. If that is to be the function of education, it has not been revealed as such either by philosophers trying to justify its direction or by practitioners involved in its delivery. Of course, as Nietzsche well knew, education serves a social and economic function, but neither designers nor practitioners (nor Nietzsche nor this writer) would be satisfied to limit education to such an instrumental purpose. Rather than relying on predefined and external motivation for action, the call to personal challenge presented here is a focus on the possibility for the reflective few to challenge accepted definitions, to query the level of insertion of government into

166

CONCLUSION

the construction of identity, to resist the submersion of identity to extrinsic purpose, and to ensure sufficient social space for difference. The importance of Nietzsche’s critique lies not in proving that no education is needed, nor in suggesting that the individual should be somehow removed from social engagement; but in problematising the nature of the relationship between the self and society, in questioning the governing role played by reason in the development of social selves, and in interrogating the political structures that are charged with maintaining the current order. Translated into the realm of educational philosophy, that entails a de-emphasis on totalising rationality and a greater emphasis on a deconstructive genealogy of the social and cultural milieu in which the self and society define each other. Looking beyond the corporeal world, religious philosophy looks for truth in divine inspiration or spiritual essence to provide the motivation for how we should live, while metaphysics investigates the world beyond our perception in the hope of yielding universal truths. Educational philosophy has consistently examined competing versions of what these ideals might mean in both theory and practice, and often attempted, with varying degrees of success, to reconcile philosophical and political difference in the search of some universal guiding ideas. From an examination of Kantian metaphysics, it has been shown how the liberal tradition in philosophy currently establishes the ‘essence’ of human nature and thus its educational ideals in the promotion of individual freedom, democratic process, and the essential dignity of a universal transcendental self. Recent politically-fuelled trends towards a neoliberal interpretation of the self as rational chooser within a competitive market place have undermined any direction towards a holistic view of the self and have pre-empted the need for human embodiment and social engagement historically seen as important in defining both our self and society. Neoliberals see as central to liberal thought the doctrine of rational autonomy and (as far as possible) unimpeded liberty, although more temperate liberals want to acknowledge such ideals as a ‘concern for truth’ and ‘respect for persons’ as mediating factors in the application of reason to all human interaction. Democratic critiques of individual liberty hold to different notions of freedom and equality, and historical debate in educational philosophy has raged over such differences as positive versus negative freedom, equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome, the relationship between individual freedom and various degrees of socialism, and the notion of rights for feminist groups and/or ethnic minorities. Until the economic reforms of the last two decades, Western educational theory featured various assemblages of Kantian autonomy as a desirable goal and democracy as the preferred social practice. Both of these constructs appeal to a belief in reason in defining freedom and morality for all; in other words, prevailing discourses operate within a paradigm of universalism, assuming an ideal human type even if the content detail of individual beings may vary. Underpinning the whole endeavour is the quest for unity and justified certainty – for a position that could be called truth. What we have under liberal philosophy and under various

167

CHAPTER 10

constructions of democratic systems then, is a model of education governed by a belief in, and a quest for, universal truth. The focus of this book, though, has not been the debate between liberal and democratic constructions of self, or between the competing claims of scientific and religious belief as the basis for educational ethics. Instead, these positions are assembled as a singular ethical position, one that is characterised by its reliance on some fundamental belief for the truth of its moral commitment. Whether the notion of ‘the good’ involves individual freedom or eternal salvation, whether it involves equality for all or corrective action for the oppressed; each of these positions shares a common commitment to the idea that some fundamental truth or other provides the basis for ethical action – a truth that holds for all people, irrespective of their differences. In a world of singular epistemological commitment, such philosophy is a political platform from which ‘truth’ is disseminated to the unconvinced. Nietzsche captured the evangelistic nature of such philosophy in his reference to Kant as a ‘cunning Christian’. Metaphysics has been defined as ‘the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality’ (Butchvarov, 1995, p. 489). It can be seen as the realm in which attempts are made to define the existence of what is. Historically, these attempts have included the appeal to divine revelation to demonstrate the existence of God, anthropomorphic techniques to signify human essence, and rational proof to justify reason as a meta-narrative. Given that the search for the truth about metaphysics is itself a metaphysical quest, there can be no a priori certainty about the nature of what is. Such realisation led Heidegger to suggest that, with Nietzsche, metaphysics has divested itself of its own essential possibility, and we are left with nothing but inessentiality and disarray. We have reached a final stage in Western metaphysics, he says, since “the suprasensory is transformed into an unstable product of the sensory. And with such a debasement of its antithesis, the sensory denies its own essence” (Heidegger, 1977b, pp. 53-54) In contrast to the philosophical quest for certainty, Nietzschean ethics, more recently developed under such labels as postmodernism, poststructuralism or deconstruction, refuses to accept the totalising effect of governance by transcendental reason or the existence of some universal truth. This refusal incorporates a rejection of the homogeneity assumed under universal goals, and shies away from any prescriptive morality that draws its authority from a transcendental world. Nietzsche’s rejection of any ‘other worldly’ realm leads to his eventual rejection of not only the supposedly ‘real’ or transcendental world, but also the apparent world as its mere reflection. His final stage of rejection involves the collapse of any metaphysical distinction between a ‘real’ and an ‘apparent’ world, with implications not only for religious belief, but also for the transcendental ideals of liberal thought. What is left in the Nietzschean world is the embodied, reflective and creative self as a source of ethics, and a corporeal world of sentient beings as the real (and only) world for man. Where there is no metaphysical realm of reason, no divine inspiration for morality, and no transcendental basis for human essence, the focus of educational philosophy takes on a new role. This book has been an exploration of Nietzschean thought about some problems that arise for education when

168

CONCLUSION

transcendental goals are rejected, and an examination of the idea of Übermensch as an individual response to life. As an alternative to the idea that education brings to fruition some kind of rational essence, Nietzsche posits a process of subjectivity, in which there is a continuous process of overcoming and becoming. In his view, there is no supreme ideal or normative concept to aspire to, no evolutionary or linear development towards an absolute, and no divine presence to shape our morality. Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement of the death of God is not an announcement of the actual death of a spiritual being, so much as a recognition that life is nothing more than the sensory world we inhabit, and a realisation that divine mythology or metaphysical essence no longer informs our culture. The death of God also signified for Nietzsche the end of an erroneous belief in the one norm for mankind and the end of Christian morality. His eulogising of the polytheism of early Greek culture was a celebration of a world that permitted a plurality of gods and thus a plurality of norms for man. In that plurality, the freedom conceded to a god in relation to other gods was also eventually granted to oneself in relation to one’s laws, one’s customs and one’s neighbours. Polytheism was thus a vehicle through which it was possible to generate one’s own values and a means to “create for ourselves our own new eyes ⎯ and ever again new eyes that are even more our own” (GS §143). Nietzsche’s whole philosophical project has been described as counternihilistic – in other words as a response to what he called European nihilism and the pessimism of his German predecessors. While Nietzsche’s early philosophy was shaped to a considerable extent by his reverence for Schopenhauer, he later rejected the inevitability of a world of suffering and misery. Nietzsche redeemed Schopenhauer’s notion of the Will as some terrible essence, seeing willing as a liberating force that could elevate man beyond the vale of tears and suffering. Nietzsche transformed the Will into a positive force as his notion of will to power, as a celebration of the embodied world, and a rejection of a transcendental afterlife. Nietzsche saw Christianity as a vain attempt to deal with nihilism and despair, in that it denied the sensuality of the material world. Christians could tolerate the suffering of our worldly existence because their salvation was available in a heavenly afterlife. With the death of God, Christianity loses its value, and with the notion of ‘God’ signifying the transcendental world in general, metaphysics also loses its effectiveness as an antidote to nihilism. The ‘higher’ value of truth (based as it is on the transcendental ‘reality’) disappears and so any scholarly quest for salvation through knowledge becomes, for Nietzsche, merely a substitution of one false metaphysical entity for another. Nietzsche’s evaluation of modern Western culture is rather bleak, with no meaning other than the satisfaction of biological or psychological needs. Utilitarian ethics and the nihilism of consumer culture evident in Western capitalism today can be interpreted as deriving from an attempt to satisfy such needs and to maximise happiness, with the continuous and ever renewing quest for more happiness providing the basis for its own ceaseless and unsatisfiable desire. Nietzsche criticises the search for happiness as the overriding and obsessive concern of a humanity with no higher focus. The vision of a peaceful

169

CHAPTER 10

homogeneous society holds little value for Nietzsche. On the contrary, his Zarathustra preaches, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” (Z I, Prologue §5). With the collapse of the transcendental world and a negative valuation on salvation through religion, the earthly realm is the only world in which one can find direction for life. The appeasement of suffering, the search for happiness, or the satisfaction of animal instincts is not a basis for Nietzsche’s new morality, nor is it a focus for his ‘philosophers of the future’. His concern with culture, suffering and redemption called for a new, albeit unfinished valuation (a ‘revaluation of all values’), with man not as an object (a ‘creat-ure’ of God), but as ‘creat-or’. Given the death of god, and the end of any higher realm from which to draw meaning, what was left for Nietzsche was the idea of Übermenschlich creation as redemption from suffering, and as a means of ascribing value to life. We, however, want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves .... we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense (GS §335). Zarathustra describes three stages in the development of the spirit, all of which are important in the overcoming of nihilism. The first stage of development is signified by the camel, aware of the burden imposed by facing up to the challenges of life; secondly, there is the lion striking out for freedom by saying no to prevailing morality; and finally, the metamorphosis into the child, whose function is – unhampered by tradition – the creation of new values: The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a selfpropelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes’. For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred ‘Yes’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world (Z 1, On the Three Metamorphoses).

170

REFERENCES

Allen, R. (2004). Whiteness and Critical Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 121136. Aloni, N. (1989). The Three Pedagogical Dimensions of Nietzsche's Philosophy. Educational Theory, 39(4), 301-306. Ameriks, K. (1999). Immanuel Kant. In R. Popkin (Ed.), The Pimlico History of Western Philosophy. London: Pimlico. Ameriks, K. (Ed.). (2000). The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ansell-Pearson, K. (1994). An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Appel, F. (1999). Nietzsche Contra Democracy. New York: Cornell University Press. Aviram, A. (1991). Nietzsche as Educator. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 25(2), 219-234. Barber, B. (1984). Strong Democracy. California: University of California Press. Barrow, R. (1975). The Philosophy of Education. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books. Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A. and Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. New York: Harper & Row. Benn, S., & Peters, R. (1959). Social Principles and the Democratic State. London: George Allen & Unwin. Berlin, I. (1969). Two Concepts of Liberty. In H. Hardy (Ed.), Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berry, C. (1989). The Idea of a Democratic Community. New York: St. Martins Press. Bingham, C. (1998). The Goals of Language, The Language of Goals: Nietzsche's Concern with Rhetoric and its Educational Implications. Educational Theory, 48(2), 229-240. Bingham, C. (2001). What Friedrich Nietzsche Cannot Stand About Education: Toward A Pedagogy Of Self-Reformulation. Educational Theory, 51(3), 337-352. Bolger, J. (1995a). Investing In Our Future: Towards 2010: Companion document to the 1995 Budget Policy Statement. Wellington: New Zealand Government. Bolger, J. (1995b). Strategic Result Areas for the Public Sector 1994-1997. Wellington: Parliament Buildings. Bolger, J. (1998). A View from the Top. Auckland: Viking. Bowie, A. (2001). Bowie, Andrew, "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = Bracken, H. (1999). Renee Descartes. In R. Popkin (Ed.), The Pimlico History of Western Philosophy. London: Pimlico. Breazeale, D. (Ed.). (1990). Philosophy and Truth, Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's. London: Humanities Paperback Library. Bryant, W. (1971). Hegel's Educational Ideas. New York: AMS Press Inc. Burchell, G. (1991). Peculiar Interests: Civil Society and Governing the 'System of Natural Liberty'. In G. Burchell, Gordon, C., & Miller, P. (eds) (Ed.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burchell, S. (1966). Age of Progress, Great Ages of Man, A History of World Cultures. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books. Butchvarov, P. (1995). Metaphysics. In R. Audi (Ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Callinicos, A. (2001). Against the Third Way: An Anti-Capitalist Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.

171

REFERENCES Caputo, J. (Ed.). (1997). Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press. Connolly, W. (1991). Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. New York: Cornell University Press. Connolly, W. (2000). Refashioning the Secular. In J. Butler & J. Guillory & K. Thomas (Eds.), What's Left of Theory? New York: Routledge. Coole, D. (1998). The Politics of Reading Nietzsche. Political Studies, 46(2), 348-363. Cooper, D. (1983a). Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche's Educational Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cooper, D. (1983b). On Reading Nietzsche on Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 17(1), 117-126. Cooper, D. (2003). Postmodernism. In R. Curren (Ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Copleston, F. (1958). A History of Philosophy Vol 4. London: Burns & Oates Limited. Copleston, F. (1960). A History of Philosophy Vol 6. London: Burns & Oates Limited. Cranston, M. (1991). The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Crittenden, J. (2002). Democracy's Midwife: An Education in Deliberation. Maryland USA: Lexington Books. Danto, A. (1965). Nietzsche as Philosopher. New York: Macmillan. Darwin, C. (1966). On the Origin of Species. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dean, M. (1991). The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance. London: Routledge. Dearden, R. (1968). The Philosophy of Primary Education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dearden, R. (1972). Autonomy and Education. In R. Dearden, P. Hirst & R. Peters (Eds.), Education and the Development of Reason. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Deigh, J. (1995). Ethics. In R. Audi (Ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and Philosophy (H. Tomlinson, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations 1972-1990. New York: Columbia University Press. Department of Social Welfare. (1998). Towards A Code of Social and Family Responsibility: Public Discussion Document. Wellington: Corporate Communications Unit. Derrida, J. (1970). Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences. In R. Macksey & E. Donato (Eds.), The Structuralist Controversy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (2001). "Talking liberties". In G. Biesta & D. Egéa-Kuehne (Eds.), Derrida & Education. London: Routledge. Derrida, J. (2002). Nietzsche and the Machine (R. Beardsworth, Trans.). In E. Rottenberg (Ed.), Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan. Distante, P. (2000). History of Western Philosophy. Retrieved 6 December 2003, from http://home.earthlink.net/~pdistan/howp6.html Donzelot, J. (1979). The Policing of Families. New York: Pantheon. Easton, B. (1993). From Rogernomics to Ruthanasia: New Right Economics in New Zealand. In S. Rees & G. Rodley & F. Stilwell (Eds.), Beyond the Market: Alternatives to Economic Rationalism. Sydney: Pluto Press. Fichte, J. (1987). The Vocation of Man (P. Preuss, Trans.). Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company. Foucault, M. (1974). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1975). I, Pierre Rivere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother... a case of parricide in the 19th century. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline & Punish (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Penguin.

172

REFERENCES Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (C. Gordon & L. Marshall & J. Mepham & K. Soper, Trans.). New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1984a). What is Enlightenment? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1984b). Polemics, Politics and Problematizations: An Interview. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1984c). What is an Author? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1984d). Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1990). The History of Sexuality: Vol 1 – An Introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1996). Foucault Live (Collected Interviews 1961-84) (L. Hochroth & J. Johnston, Trans.). New York: Semiotext(e). Foucault, M. (1997a). An Interview with Stephen Riggins. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics – The Essential Works 1. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1997b). On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics – The Essential Works 1. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (2001a). Truth and Juridical Forms. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Power – The Essential Works 3. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Foucault, M. (2001b). Interview with Michel Foucault. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Power – The Essential Works 3. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Foucault, M. (2001c). The Subject and Power. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Power: The Essential Works 3. London: Penguin. France, P. (1987). Rousseau: Confessions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraser, N., & Gordon, L. (1994). A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a keyword of the U.S. Welfare State. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 19(2). Freud, S. (1932). Collected Papers Vol. 4 (J. Riviere, Trans.). New York: Basic Books. Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. Auckland: Penguin. Gaus, G., & Courtland, S. (2003). Liberalism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition) URL = Gay, P. (1966). Age of Enlightenment. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books. “German Idealism". (2001). Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 6 November 2003, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/germidea.htm Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (2002). Where Now for New Labour? Cambridge: Polity Press. Giroux, H. (1988). Postmodernism and the Discourse of Educational Criticism. Journal of Education, 170(3), 5-30. Golomb, J. (1985). Nietzsche's Early Educational Thought. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 19(1), 99-105. Golomb, J. (1997). Nietzsche & Jewish Culture. New York: Routledge. Gordon, H. (1980). Nietzsche's Zarathustra as Educator. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 14(2), 181-192. Gray, J. (1986). Liberalism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Green, D. (1996). From Welfare State to Civil Society. Wellington: New Zealand Business Roundtable. Green, T. (1986). Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, M. (2001). The Perils of Rationality: Nietzsche, Peirce and Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 33(1), 23-34. Grofman, B., & Feld, S. (1988). Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective. The American Political Science Review, 82(2). Gruber, D. (1989). Foucault's Critique of the Liberal Individual. Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVI(ii). Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic Education. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

173

REFERENCES Haar, M. (1995). Nietzsche and Metaphysical Language. In D. B. Allison (Ed.), The New Nietzsche. Cambridge: New University Press. Habermas, J. (1987). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (F. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1989). The Theory of Communicative Action (T. McCarthy, Trans. Vol. 2). Boston: Beacon Press. Hale, J. (1965). Renaissance, Great Ages of Man, A History of World Cultures. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books. Hampson, N. (1968). The Enlightenment. New York: Penguin. Hanfling, O. (1972). Kant's Copernican Revolution: Moral Philosophy. Great Britain: Open University Press. Harris, K. (1979). Education and Knowledge: The Structured Misrepresentation of Reality. London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hatab, L. (1995). A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics. Chicago: Open Court. Hausheer, R. (1999). Fichte and Schelling. In A. O'Hear (Ed.), German Philosophy Since Kant. New York: Cambridge University Press. Haworth, N. (1994). Neo-Liberalism, Economic Internationalism and the Contemporary State in New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Hayek, F. (1971). The Road To Serfdom. London: Routledge. Hayek, F. (1978). The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hegel, G. (1985). Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy (T. Knox & A. Millar, Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hegel, G. (1998). Phenomenology of Spirit. In S. Houlgate (Ed.), The Hegel Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (1977a). The Question Concerning Technology, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1977b). The Turning, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1977c). The Word of Nietzsche, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1985). Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? In D. B. Allison (Ed.), The New Nietzsche. Cambridge: MIT Press. Heidegger, M. (1987). Nietzsche (D. K. F. K. Joan Stambaugh, Trans. Vol. 3). San Francisco: Harper & Row. Held, D. (1996). Models of Democracy (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Higgins, K. (1988). Reading Zarathustra. In R. Solomon & K. Higgins (Eds.), Reading Nietzsche. New York: Oxford University Press. Hillesheim, J. (1973). Nietzsche Agonistes. Educational Theory, 23(4), 343-353. Hillesheim, J. (1986). Suffering and Self-Cultivation: The Case of Nietzsche. Educational Theory, 36(2), 171-178. Hillesheim, J. (1990). Nietzschean Images of Self-Overcoming: Response to Rosenow. Educational Theory, 40(2), 211-215. Hindess, B. (1996). Liberalism, socialism and democracy: variations on a governmental theme. In A. Barry, T. Osborne & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press. Hollingdale, R. (1996). The Hero as Outsider. In B. Magnus & K. Higgins (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hultqvist, K. (2001). Bringing the Gods and Angels Back? In K. Hultqvist & G. Dahlberg (Eds.), Governing the Child in the New Milennium. New York: RoutledgeFarmer. Hume, D. (1927). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co.

174

REFERENCES Hunt, A., & Wickham, G. (1994). Foucault and Law: Towards a Sociology of Law and Governance. London: Pluto Press. Inwood, M. (1995). Enlightenment. In T. Honderich (Ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Janaway, C. (1994). Schopenhauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, K. (1982). The Dogma of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 16(2), 251-254. Johnson, P. (1996). Nietzsche's Reception Today. Radical Philosophy, 80(November/December). Johnston, J. (1998). Nietzsche as Educator: A Reexamination. Educational Theory, 48(1), 67-83. Johnston, S. (2001). Nietzsche, Education and Democracy. In M. Peters, J. Marshall & P. Smeyers (Eds.), Nietzsche's Legacy for Education: Past and Present Values. London: Bergin & Garvey. Kant, I. (1934). Critique of Pure Reason (J. Meiklejohn, Trans.). London: Dent. Kant, I. (1960). Education. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Kant, I. (1988). Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (T. K. Abbott, Trans.). New York: Prometheus Books. Kant, I. (1990). What is Enlightenment?, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment. New York: Macmillan. Kant, I. (1996). Critique of Practical Reason (T. K. Abbott, Trans.). New York: Prometheus Books. Kant, I. (undated). Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Retrieved 30 December 2003, from http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant-prolegomena.txt Kaufmann, W. (1974). Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (4th ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kelsey, J. (1995). The New Zealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment? Auckland: Auckland University Press. Kelsey, J. (2002). At The Crossroads. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. Kemerling, G. (2001). The Development of Absolute Idealism. Retrieved 15 December 2003, from http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5k.htm Kiziltan, M., Bain, W., & Canizares, M. (1990). Postmodern Conditions: Rethinking Public Education. Educational Theory, 3(40), 351-369. Klossowski, P. (1997). Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (D. Smith, Trans.). London: Athlone Press. Kofman, S. (1993). Nietzsche and Metaphor (D. Large, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kohlberg, L. (1981). The Philosophy of Moral Development. New York: Harper & Row. Kymlicka, W. (1990). Contemporary Political Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lacan, J. (1977). The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, Écrits: A Selection. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co. Lankshear, C. (1982). Freedom and Education: Towards a Non-Rational Philosophy of Education. Auckland: Milton Brookes. Leiter, B. (1997). Nietzsche and the Morality Critics. Ethics, 107(2). Levy, O. (Ed.). (1985). Friedrich Nietzsche Selected Letters. London: Soho Book Company. Lovitt, W. (1977). Translator's footnote, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lyotard, J.-F. (1988). The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (G. V. d. Abbeele, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Machiavelli, N. (1993). The Prince. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. Mahon, M. (1992). Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogy: Truth, Power and the Subject. Albany: State University of New York Press. Malthus, T. (1993). An Essay on the Principle of Population. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mangiafico, J. (1998). Rethinking Democracy after Nietzsche. Philosophy Today, 42(Supplement), 112118. Marginson, S. (1997). Is economics sufficient for the government of education? New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 32(1), 3-12.

175

REFERENCES Marshall, J. (1995). Michel Foucault: Governmentality and Liberal Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 14(1), 23-34. Marshall, J. (1996a). Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Marshall, J. (1996b). The Autonomous Chooser and 'Reforms' in Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 15(1), 89-96. Marshall, J. (1996c). Personal Autonomy and Liberal Education: A Foucauldian Critique. In M. Peters & W. Hope & J. Marshall & S. Webster (Eds.), Critical Theory, Poststructuralism and the Social Context. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. Marshall, J., & Peters, M. (1994). Postmodernism and Education. In T. Husen & T. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The International Encyclopaedia of Education (2 ed.). New York: Pergamon. Masuda, Y. (1981). The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society. Washington: World Future Society. May, H. (1997). The Discovery of Early Childhood. New Zealand: Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books. McCarthy, C., & Dimitriadis, G. (2004). Postcolonial Literature and the Curricular Imagination: Wilson Harris and the Pedagogical Implications of the Carnivalesque. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 201-213. McKerrow, R. (2000). Foucault and Surrealism of the Truth. Retrieved 6 June 2004, from http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~mckerrow/foucault.htm Megill, A. (1987). Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. Berkeley: University of California Press. Meyers, D. (2004). "Feminist Perspectives on the Self", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/feminism-self/ Mill, J. (1982). On Liberty. London: Penguin Classics. Ministry of Economic Development. (2004). A Guide to the Charities Bill: A Summary of the Proposed Registration System for Charities and Function of a Charities Commission. Wellington: Charities Commission Preparatory Unit. Ministry of Education. (2002). Tertiary Education Strategy 2002/2007. Wellington: Office of the Associate Minister of Education – Tertiary Education. Moss, P., & Petrie, P. (2002). From Children's Services to Children's Spaces: Public Policy, Children and Childhood. London: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (1988). Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern? In A. Ross (Ed.), Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Munzel, G. (2003). Kant, Hegel, and the Rise of Pedagogical Science. In R. Curren (Ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Nehamas, A. (1985). Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1909). On the Future of Our Educational Institutions. In O. Levy (Ed.), The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. London: T.N. Foulis. Nietzsche, F. (1967). The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Toronto: Random House. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The Will to Power (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Random House. Nietzsche, F. (1982). Daybreak (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1982a). Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Penguin. Nietzsche, F. (1983a). On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. In C. Taylor (Ed.), Untimely Meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1983b). Schopenhauer as Educator. In C. Taylor (Ed.), Untimely Meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1986a). Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

176

REFERENCES Nietzsche, F. (1986b). The Wanderer and His Shadow. In R. J. Hollingdale (Ed.), Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1989). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, F. (1990a). Beyond Good and Evil (R. Hollingdale, Trans.). London: Penguin. Nietzsche, F. (1990b). Twilight of the Idols & The Anti-Christ (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). London: Penguin. Nietzsche, F. (1990c). On Truth and Lies In A Nonmoral Sense. In D. Breazeale (Ed.), Philosophy and Truth, Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's. London: Humanities Paperback Library. Office of the New Zealand Associate Minister of Education. (2002). Tertiary Education Strategy 2002 2007. Olssen, M. (2001). Citizenship and Education: From Alfred Marshall to Iris Marion Young. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 33(1), 77-94. Orwell, G. (1989). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin. Owen, D. (1995). Nietzsche, Politics & Modernity: A Critique of Liberal Reason. London: Sage Publications. Parkes, G. (1989). A Cast of Many: Nietzsche and depth-psychological pluralism. Man and World, 22, 453-470. Paton, H. (1963). The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. London: Hutchinson. Peters, M. (1995). Radical democracy, the politics of difference, and education. In B. Kanpol & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical Multiculturalism: Uncommon Voices in a Common Struggle. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey. Peters, M. (1996). Poststructuralism, Politics and Education. Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey. Peters, M. (2004). Nietzsche's Educational Legacy Revisited: A Response to Professor Rosenow. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23(2), 203-209. Peters, M., & Marshall, J. (1996). Individualism and Community, Education and Social Policy in the Postmodern Condition. London: The Falmer Press. Peters, M., & Roberts, P. (1999). University Futures and the Politics of Reform in New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. Peters, M., & Wain, K. (2003). Postmodernism / Post-structuralism. In N. Blake & P. Smeyers & R. Smith & P. Standish (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Peters, M., Marshall, J., & Smeyers, P. (Eds.). (2001). Nietzsche's Legacy for Education: Past and PresentVvalues: Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey. Peters, R. (1966). Ethics and Education. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Peters, R. (1974). Authority, Responsibility and Education. London: Allen & Unwin. Pinkard, T. (2002). German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Popkin, R. (Ed.). (1999). The Pimlico History of Western Philosophy. London: Random House. Popper, K. (1969). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Porter, R. (1990). The Enlightenment. London: Macmillan. Poster, M. (1989). Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context. New York: Cornell University Press. Poster, M. (1990). The Mode of Information. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ramaekers, S. (2001). Teaching to Lie and Obey: Nietzsche on Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35(2), 255-268. Rawls, J. (1973). A Theory of Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Rée, P. (2003). Basic Writings (R. Small, Trans.). Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Roberts, J. (1988). German Philosophy: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.

177

REFERENCES Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, N. (1991). Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge. Rosenow, E. (1973). What is Free Education? The Educational Significance of Nietzsche's Thought. Educational Theory, 23(4), 354-370. Rosenow, E. (1989). Nietzsche's Educational Dynamite. Educational Theory, 39(4), 307-316. Rosenow, E. (2000). Nietzsche's Educational Legacy: Reflections on Interpretations of a Controversial Philosopher. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 34(4), 673-685. Rosenow, E. (2004). Nietzsche's Educational Legacy Revised. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23(2), 189-202. Rousseau, J.-J. (1993). Émile (B. Foxley, Trans.). London: Everyman. Salomé, L. (1988). Nietzsche (S. Mandel, Trans.). Redding Ridge, Connecticut: Black Swan. Sartre, J. (1948). Existentialism and Humanism (P. Mairet, Trans.). London: Methuen & Co. Sarup, M. (1993). An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism (2 ed.). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Sassone, L. (1996). Philosophy Across the Curriculum: A Democratic Nietzschean Pedagogy. Educational Theory, 23(4), 511-524. Scatamburlo-D'Annibale, V., & McLaren, P. (2004). Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of 'difference'. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 183-199. Schacht, R. (1995). Making Sense of Nietzsche, Reflections Timely and Untimely. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Schiffman, Z. (1994). Humanism and the Problem of Relativism. In P. Desan (Ed.), The Decline of the French Renaissance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Schopenhauer, A. (1974). On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (E. Payne, Trans.). Illinois: Open Court Classics. Schrift, A. (1995). Nietzsche's French Legacy, A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. New York: Routledge. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shand, J. (1993). Philosophy and Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy. London: UCL Press. Shapiro, G. (2003). Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Siegel, H. (2003). Cultivating Reason. In R. Curren (Ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Sim, S. (1998). Lyotard, Jean-Francois. In D. C. S. Brown, R. Wilkinson (Ed.), One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers. London: Routledge. Simmel, G. (1991). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (H. Loiskandl, Trans.). Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Simons, M. (1988). Montessori, Superman and Catwoman. Educational Theory, 38(3), 341-349. Small, R. (2001). Nietzsche in Context. Hampshire: Ashgate. Smith, S., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Non Profits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting (Vol. Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. Soll, I. (1988). Pessimism and the tragic View of Life: Reconsiderations of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. In R. Solomon & K. Higgins (Eds.), Reading Nietzsche. New York: Oxford University Press. Spivey, N. (1997). The Constructivist Metaphor in Discourse Theory: Reading, Writing and the Making of Meaning. California: Academic Press. Stauth, G., & Turner, B. (1988). Nietzsche's Dance: Resentment, Reciprocity and Resistance in Social life. Oxford: Blackwell. Stern, J. (1983). Introduction, Untimely Meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stiglitz, J. (1999) Public Policy for a Knowledge Economy. Retrieved 14 September 2004, from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20025143~menuPK:3447 4~pagePK:34370~piPK:42770~theSitePK:4607,00.html Strike, K. (1982). Educational Policy and the Just Society. London: University of Illinois Press.

178

REFERENCES Sturrock, J. (1986). Structuralism. London: Paladin. Tanner, M. (1990). Introduction, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. London: Penguin. Tanner, M. (1994). Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (1992). Sources of the Self: Making of the Modern Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Touraine, A. (1997). What is Democracy? (D. Macey, Trans.). Oxford: Westview Press. Tubbs, N. (2003). Return of the Teacher. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), 71-88. Upton, S. (1987). The Withering of the State. Wellington: Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press and the NBR. Walker, J. (1976). The Possibility of Personal Autonomy. Paper presented at the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, May 1976, Auckland. Warren, B. (1988). Nietzsche and Political Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press. West, C. (1990). The New Cultural Politics of Difference. In R. Ferguson et al. (Eds.), Out there: Marginalization and contemporary culture. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Wicks, R. (2004). "Friedrich Nietzsche", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = . Wilkinson, M. (1995). Rationality, Efficiency and the Market. In J. Boston (Ed.), The State Under Contract. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. Wolch, J. (1990). The Shadow State: Government and the Voluntary Sector in Transition. New York: The Foundation Center. Wold, M., & Cykler, E. (1985). An Outline History of Music (6 ed.). Iowa: Wm. C. Brown. Young, I. (1986). The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference. Social Theory and Practice, 12(Spring), 1-26. Young, I. (1997). Polity and Group Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence? In R. E. Goodin & P. Pettit (Eds.), Contemporary Political Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Young, I. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press. Young, J. (1992). Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, J. (2003). The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge.

179

INDEX

aesthetic, 1, 7, 14, 16, 25, 39, 41, 43, 54, 69, 70, 77, 82-85, 93, 110, 113 agonism, 4, 8, 10, 11, 61, 79, 85, 87-89, 103, 119, 137, 144, 149, 160, 165, 166 Apollonian, 4, 7, 25, 30, 41, 51, 57, 58, 60, 63, 65, 81, 101, 103 authority, 1, 4, 26, 30, 31-34, 37, 38, 43, 46, 48, 57, 64, 69, 73, 74, 75, 86, 88, 98, 112, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136, 141, 162, 168 autonomy, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 31, 44-46, 65, 67, 71, 74, 94, 108, 112-120, 126, 131, 133, 139, 140, 165-167 becoming, 1, 4, 5, 7, 15, 20, 24, 29, 49, 59, 60, 61, 95, 103, 110, 120, 123, 161, 164, 169 character, 6, 7, 11, 13, 23, 26, 27, 37, 43, 48, 49, 51, 52, 57, 60, 91, 94, 102, 103, 111, 124, 127, 135, 155, 156, 159, 163, 165 Christianity, 1, 4, 6, 10, 18, 31, 33, 34, 39, 42, 47, 50, 52, 70, 82-84, 94, 95, 100, 103, 108, 112, 141, 151, 152, 153, 157, 168, 169 closure, 3, 8, 10, 86, 89, 93, 137, 139 community, 2, 3, 5, 9, 21, 23, 35, 75, 85, 106, 116, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128-132, 136-139, 145, 146, 166 contest, 11, 56, 57, 61, 62, 67, 70, 84-86, 103, 115, 119, 144, 149, 160 critical, 8, 9, 14, 33, 42, 48, 61, 63, 72, 74, 83, 92, 93, 101, 104-106, 125, 134, 137, 157 culture, 3, 5, 7, 12-15, 17, 20-25, 27, 28, 33, 37, 42, 45, 52, 56, 57, 60, 61, 65, 67, 68, 71, 81, 85, 86, 92, 94, 98, 99, 103, 105, 110, 115, 127, 128, 130, 137-139, 146, 147, 149, 155, 156, 159-162, 165, 169, 170 Darwin, 21, 38, 62, 158, 159, 172 democracy, 2-5, 8-10, 31, 55-57, 60, 65-67, 69, 71, 73, 75-80, 85, 87, 88, 98, 106, 126134, 136, 137, 139-147, 160, 165-167 democracy to come, 5, 10, 143, 146, 147 democracy: social, 4, 9, 69, 122, 128, 138, 139 Derrida, 2, 10, 55, 92, 99, 100, 105, 143, 145 Descartes, 6, 31, 33, 73, 140 destiny, 21, 24, 40, 49, 59, 60, 94, 161 Dewey, 3, 9, 57, 64, 94, 133, 134, 136 difference, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 19, 28, 32, 37, 46, 52, 54, 57, 59, 64, 65, 70, 71, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85, 89, 92-94, 105, 106, 110, 126, 128, 130, 137, 139, 140, 142, 146, 159, 165-167

difference: politics of, 5, 10, 71, 146, 147 Dionysian, 4, 7, 25, 30, 41, 47, 50, 51, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 65, 81, 101, 103, 149, 152, 155, 159 economy, 1, 2, 4, 5, 21, 27, 28, 33, 71, 73, 75, 84, 93, 96, 98, 102, 109, 112, 117, 121, 122, 123, 125, 131, 136, 139, 153, 160, 164, 166, 167 ego, 61, 99, 101, 102, 146 Enlightenment (the), 13, 20, 31, 69, 87, 93, 94, 120, 127, 141 eternal recurrence, 1, 11, 12, 29, 70, 150-153 experience, 9, 10, 14, 18, 26, 28, 30, 34-36, 39, 40, 44, 48, 50, 51, 57, 58, 66-70, 73, 78, 82, 91, 93, 97, 105, 110, 111, 117, 133, 134, 136, 140, 147, 152, 166 Fichte, 34, 36, 37, 40-42 Foucault, 2, 4, 8, 9, 32, 46, 54, 55, 74, 81, 83, 86, 92, 96, 104, 105, 108-112, 115-120, 124, 137, 144, 145, 158, 164 freedom, 2, 4, 5-7, 9, 17, 18, 24, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45, 48, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 64, 65, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 88, 89, 94-96, 109, 110, 114, 115, 118, 120, 122, 123, 127-129, 132, 134-140, 143, 147, 155, 156, 159, 163-165, 167-170 Freud, 61, 101 genealogy, 1, 2, 4, 8, 29, 48, 63, 79, 83-85, 104, 107, 109-112, 116, 119, 123, 127, 137, 138, 155, 156, 167 genius, 4, 5, 7, 13, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26-28, 32, 52, 56, 57, 62, 65, 71, 127, 128, 138, 149, 150, 152, 161, 165 German, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15-17, 19-21, 24, 25, 27, 29-31, 33, 36- 42, 52, 56, 66-68, 127, 143, 155, 156, 161, 169, 177 god, 4, 6, 11, 27, 34, 37, 39, 47, 48, 50, 64, 70, 73, 94, 105, 108, 109, 123, 141, 150, 156, 160, 166, 168-170 death of god, 4, 7, 12, 70, 105, 150, 153, 157, 166, 170 good and evil, 1, 35, 47, 57, 61, 82, 153 government, 2, 8, 9, 17, 25, 26, 32, 33, 43, 71, 73-75, 78, 88, 89, 106, 108, 116, 118, 121124, 126-129, 131-134, 142, 144, 153, 154, 160, 166 Greek, 14, 19, 20, 22, 26, 30, 56, 61, 81, 103, 130, 149, 163, 169 happiness, 18, 22, 35, 44, 60, 154, 155, 157, 169, 170 health, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 52, 63, 66, 82, 103, 104, 122, 124, 154, 156, 157, 158

180

INDEX Hegel, 17, 19, 26, 30, 36-38, 40-42, 51, 52, 93-95, 98, 103, 127, 143 Heidegger, 11, 55, 58, 92, 138, 150, 157, 163165, 168 herd, 4, 6, 58, 59, 136-138, 143, 152, 155, 161, 165 Hollingdale, 1, 15, 17, 49 idealism, 6, 15, 29, 36-38, 40-42, 48, 52, 93, 127, 156 individualism, 2, 66, 67, 74, 75, 78, 86, 87, 121, 127, 130, 132, 134, 138, 146 institution, 21, 22, 24, 60, 78, 133 justice, 4, 29, 69, 74, 77, 78, 84, 100, 112, 129-131, 138, 160 Kant, 1-4, 6-11, 15, 18, 19, 26, 29, 30-33, 3752, 54, 67, 69-71, 74-76, 78, 80-83, 86, 94, 95, 98, 108, 112-114, 127, 131, 133, 139-141, 157, 159, 160, 166-168 Kaufmann, 18, 25, 55, 145, 154, 155, 159 leadership, 25, 162 liberal, 1-6, 8, 29, 31, 54, 55, 57, 59, 65, 67, 69, 71-76, 78-80, 86, 87, 89, 92, 94, 95, 98, 100, 102, 104-106, 108, 112, 113, 117, 121, 123, 125, 127-133, 135, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 160, 165, 167, 168 liberalism, 4, 8, 32, 33, 37, 55, 65, 69, 71, 73, 74-76, 78, 79, 86, 89, 92, 114, 121, 131, 132, 139, 140 life, 6, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 22, 23, 28, 37, 41, 42, 47, 49, 50, 52, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 70, 82, 149, 150, 152, 154, 159, 165, 169 life and health, 1, 69, 158, 165 life: social, 3, 4, 37, 69, 81, 85, 89, 129, 134, 137, 141 Locke, 33, 34, 36, 74, 87, 129, 131, 140 Lyotard, 2, 91, 92, 97, 98, 100, 117 metaphor, 4, 7, 10-13, 15, 21, 38, 41, 55, 57, 62, 65, 70, 81, 82, 93, 99, 101, 102, 106, 121, 124, 137, 149, 153, 165 morality, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8-10, 19, 29, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 43-52, 54, 63, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 82, 84, 88, 95, 99-101, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116, 119, 125, 127, 138, 140-143, 145, 150, 152, 153, 157, 159, 165, 167-170 amoral, 25; immoral, 3, 86 multiplicity, 3, 5, 8, 10, 64, 68, 92, 93, 95, 100, 101, 104, 112, 146 Nazi, 18, 98 neoliberalism, 2, 3, 75, 78, 121, 122, 125, 126, 167 nihilism, 7, 10-12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 40, 48, 52, 54, 58, 63, 64, 69, 70, 83, 86, 100, 108, 110, 128, 136, 149, 155-157, 161, 162, 165, 169, 170 otherness, 3, 4, 8-11, 54, 85, 86, 88, 89, 93, 139, 140, 143, 146, 149, 159, 160

overcoming, 4, 7, 10-13, 18, 25, 28, 31, 41, 44, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 64, 65, 71, 101, 103, 126, 128, 143, 149-154, 158-160, 162, 165, 166, 169, 170 overman, 25, 58, 60, 62, 63, 65-67, 150, 152159 perspective, 3-8, 10, 12, 28, 47, 65-67, 69, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 89, 94, 102, 103, 105, 109111, 115, 120, 125, 128, 131, 135, 136, 138, 140, 144, 145, 152, 160, 165 perspectivism, 1, 3, 7, 8, 12, 29, 65, 70, 79, 80, 82, 85, 89, 93, 102 pessimism, 6, 15, 16, 19, 41, 47, 169 political, 2-6, 8-12, 17, 24, 27, 28, 30-38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 54, 57, 60, 64, 67, 73, 75, 78, 79-81, 84-89, 92, 95-97, 105-107, 109, 117, 119-121, 123-133, 135-140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 160, 166-168 poststructuralism, 1-3, 8, 55, 56, 67, 69, 9193, 95, 100, 105, 109, 114, 145, 146, 168 rationality, 1-4, 6, 8-11, 14, 17, 18, 21, 25, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42-46, 4852, 54, 65, 68, 69, 71, 73-82, 84-89, 9294, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 112-121, 124, 127, 128, 131-134, 136, 139-141, 146, 147, 158-160, 166-169 reason, 1-6, 8-11, 14, 31-47, 49-52, 57, 64, 65, 69, 73, 76, 77, 79-82, 84, 86, 87, 91-99, 101, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119, 127, 128, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 147, 150, 151, 154, 157, 159, 167, 168 reason: faith in, 38, 69, 140 religion, 6, 18, 23, 24, 26, 30-33, 34, 37, 3944, 47, 52, 65, 73, 78, 84, 108, 123, 127, 132, 135, 141, 142, 150, 167, 168, 170 Rousseau, 32-35, 39, 43, 46, 57, 74, 78, 94, 138, 154 Schelling, 34, 36, 37, 40-42 Schopenhauer, 5-7, 12-19, 24-26, 29, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40-42, 49-52, 57, 60-63, 93, 127, 139, 143, 149, 152, 154, 161, 169 self as social construct, 1, 2, 11, 87, 101, 102, 107, 146, 167 social: conformity, 4, 6, 7, 8, 26, 29, 35, 52, 57, 58, 71, 77, 93, 118, 132, 135, 136, 165 social: development, 74, 123, 134 social: grouping, 9 social: institutions, 30, 57, 75, 131 social: justice, 4, 71, 77, 79, 86, 122, 127, 128, 165, 166 social: life, 3, 4, 37, 69, 81, 85, 89, 129, 134, 137, 141 social: policy, 2, 4, 121, 123 social reproduction, 135 social sciences, 38, 99

181

INDEX Socialism, 5, 10, 17, 27, 54, 71, 74, 75, 98, 122, 126-128, 132, 167 State (the), 4, 14, 17, 20-28, 57, 71, 94, 96, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 134, 135, 137 struggle, 19, 22, 24, 25, 54, 60, 62, 64, 69, 70, 101, 105, 106, 111, 138, 155, 158 subject, 1-5, 8, 13, 14, 31, 42, 44, 45, 50, 51, 54, 56, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 81, 86, 92, 93, 95-97, 99-101, 104, 105, 108, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 118, 120, 124, 125, 131, 139, 141, 146, 147, 157, 160, 166 subjectivity, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 20, 40, 68, 71, 84, 86, 93, 102, 105, 108-110, 118-124, 126, 139, 157, 169 suffering, 16, 17, 19, 35, 52, 61, 64, 70, 71, 95, 101, 103, 154, 158, 169, 170 technology, 2, 6, 11, 30, 52, 92, 94, 98, 99, 100, 109, 116, 117, 162- 166 third way, 3, 4, 9, 98, 122-126, 139 transcendental, 1, 4-6, 9-11, 18, 29, 39, 40, 45, 46, 50, 52, 69, 76, 77, 79-82, 84, 89, 92, 96, 97, 103, 105, 108, 110, 117, 127, 128, 141, 150, 153, 160, 166-170 truth, 1-4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 23, 24, 26, 30, 34, 35, 40, 46, 52, 54, 61, 68-70, 73, 76, 77, 79-86, 89-93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103-105, 109-112, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 126, 133, 137, 138, 145, 151, 158, 163, 165169

182

Übermensch, 1, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 18, 25, 26, 28, 41, 51, 52, 58, 65, 68-72, 101, 103, 107, 110, 120, 138, 139, 143, 148-150, 152-162, 164-166, 169, 170 universal: ethics, 8, 76 universal: good, 6, 46 universal: morality, 8, 14, 34, 39, 44, 79, 82, 115, 119, 152 universal: reason, 3, 5, 29, 46, 47, 50, 65, 73, 104, 115, 116, 119, 127 universal truth, 3, 4, 84, 119, 167, 168 universal values, 82 value, 5, 7, 11, 16, 18, 19, 22, 25, 30, 31, 35, 39, 43, 45, 48, 50, 62, 63, 68, 69, 71, 7983, 95, 97, 104, 126, 127, 130, 134, 137, 138, 145, 147, 151, 153, 156-159, 161, 162, 164, 169, 170 values, 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 14, 31, 48-50, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 78, 82, 84, 94, 98, 102, 103, 110, 112, 114, 122, 130, 132, 139, 146, 147, 152-154, 159, 160, 165, 169, 170 values: revaluation of, 49, 50, 60, 70, 170 Voltaire, 33, 34, 39, 140 Wagner, 13, 16, 17, 18, 30, 49, 51, 149, 152 will to power, 1, 4, 6, 9, 11, 52, 55-57, 58, 6265, 67, 70, 81, 96, 127, 153, 169 Zarathustra, 6, 7, 12, 13, 55-60, 69, 109, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 170