Morality, Agency, And Freedom in Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals"

North American Philosophical Publications

Morality, Agency, and Freedom in Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals"Author(s): Scott JenkinsSource: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 61-80Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27744941 .

Accessed: 22/02/2014 18:48

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Illinois Press and North American Philosophical Publications are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to History of Philosophy Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 81.136.137.167 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 18:48:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=napp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27744941?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


History of Philosophy Quarterly

Volume 20, Number 1, January 2003

MORALITY, AGENCY, AND FREEDOM IN NIETZSCHE'S GENEALOGY OF MORALS

Scott Jenkins

Of

Nietzsche's later works, On the Genealogy of Morals is the only one that takes the form of a treatise on a single

topic. Nietzsche also divides the work into three separate es

says, giving each a title that announces the particular moral

phenomenon under investigation. This structure of the work

may give the impression that GM requires less interpretive ef fort on the part of the reader than Beyond Good and Evil, Thus

Spoke Zarathustra, and other works of Nietzsche's that do not

follow any familiar philosophical or literary form.1

Such an impression would be mistaken, however. Some of the most interesting and important themes found in GM appear only after one moves beyond its organizational structure and attempts to reconstruct Nietzsche's thought. This is particularly true in

the case of Nietzsche's views on agency. While only two sections in the work deal explicitly with questions of action, responsibil

ity, and freedom, GM both elucidates Nietzsche's understanding of agency and furnishes the background required for understand

ing one of the most important themes of Nietzsche's later work, his conception of human freedom.

In what follows I rely on GM and the other published writ

ings, especially Nietzsche's two earlier works on morality, Human, All Too Human and Daybreak.2 The paper is divided into three sections. The first examines Nietzsche's discussion, in GM 1:13, of the understanding of agency necessary for the values "good" and "evil" to have a grip on us. It explains the structure of Nietzsche's argument against this view of agency and discusses his deterministic worldview. Completing Nietzsche's argument against the moral understanding of the

agency requires that we examine his discussion of "promising"

61



62 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

in GM II. The second section argues that much of GM II should

be read as a description of the process of socialization through which mere human beings become responsible agents. This ac

count of agency, in addition to completing Nietzsche's argument

against the moral view of agency, also points to a positive role for the values "good" and "evil." The third section argues that

the "ripest fruit" of this process of socialization, the sovereign individual of GM 11:2, personifies Nietzsche's compatibilist

understanding of freedom.

I. The Moral View of Agency

Nietzsche's discussion of the "doer and the deed" in GM 1:13

both hints at his positive views and offers the reader an in

sightful critique of morality and the values associated with

it?"good" and "evil." He states:

just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such sub

stratum; there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed? the deed (das Thun) is everything. (GM 1:13)

This passage contains Nietzsche's rightfully famous denial of the existence of the subject.3 This denial is not immediately comprehensible, however, because Nietzsche appears to be de

nying the existence of human agents. Lightning and its flash

clearly are not two separate entities. A flash of lightning is an

event, and everything that can be said of a particular instance of lightning could also be said of "its" flash. Thus in the case of

lightning, it is plausible that the doer is a mere fiction that the

"popular mind" adds after the fact. But in the case of human action it seems absurd to say the doer is a mere fiction.

Nietzsche's claim that the deed, or doing, is everything appears to leave no room for an agent.4 While actions certainly are

events, the claim that the agent itself is an event?not a doer, but instead an activity or doing?seems to be a denial of the

existence of agents.

Not surprisingly, Nietzsche does not offer a clear deductive

argument against the existence of the subject. In GM 1:13 he sim

ply describes this concept's function in the practices characteristic



NIETZSCHE'S GENEALOGY OF MORALS 63

of the proto-Christians and weak lambs of GM I. Nevertheless, this function does play a role in Nietzsche's extended argument

against the subject and the bindingness of the values "good" and "evil" employed by the lambs. Nietzsche maintains that such fig ures rely upon two techniques of self-preservation that themselves

presuppose the intelligibility of the doer-doing picture of agency, and Nietzsche's description of these practices is always critical.

The first of these techniques involves making those individu als who pose a threat to the weak responsible for their behavior in order to influence that behavior. Responsibility for one's ac

tions, in this sense, involves not just ownership of them, but also the possibility of moral evaluation?in this case, moral blame.5 When Nietzsche's lambs say among themselves "these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb?would he not be good?" (GM 1:13) they mean to establish the lamb-like behavior as proper for all. But the lambs cannot claim of the bird of prey as such that it ought to behave like a lamb, Nietzsche argues, for it is absurd to ask of something that is essentially strong, like a

bird of prey, that it act in a weak manner. Just as it would be absurd to claim that a dangerous virus ought not to make people ill, it would be absurd to "demand of strength that it should not

express itself as strength" (GM 1:13). The object of moral blame

thus cannot be the strong, dangerous bird of prey as such, but rather an entity that is not essentially the kind of thing that

produces such effects. Nietzsche's lambs employ this idea of a

"neutral substratum," the subject, in order to hold the birds of

prey morally responsible for their potentially harmful behav ior. Only given a neutral substratum does blaming the bird of

prey for particular harms or patterns of behavior become pos sible, because blaming a subject for what it has done involves

more than simply having a negative attitude toward one of its

effects. It involves viewing the subject itself as having failed to

conform to a standard to which it could have conformed.

To view the birds of prey in this manner is to ascribe to them a particular sort of freedom, what Nietzsche describes in in

tentionally Kantian terms as "the absolute spontaneity of man

in good and evil" (GM 11:7). Freedom of the will, in this sense, is a causal capacity that enables an agent to bring about events

of whatever kind it wishes. Viewed as free in this way, the birds of prey are taken to be capable of acting as a "good" agent acts

(that is, in a weak manner) if they choose to do so. With such

complete freedom comes moral responsibility, the responsibility




an agent has for acting in accordance with a particular code of

conduct. As Nietzsche says, the weak lambs "gain the right to

make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey" (GM

1:13) once they have reinterpreted the deeds of a bird of prey as

the result of radically free choices that ought to have been dif ferent.

Nietzsche suggests the second technique of self-preservation that the lambs of GM I employ in the following description of

the weak.

This type of man needs to believe in a neutral independent "subject," prompted by an instinct for self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanctified. The subject (or, to use a more popular expression, the soul) has perhaps been believed in hitherto more firmly than anything else on earth because it makes possible to the majority of mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, the sublime self-de

ception that interprets weakness as freedom, and their being thus-and-thus as a merit. (GM 1:13)

This mention of a need for a self-preserving act of "self-affir

mation" sets the stage for one of the major themes of GM, the

multifarious ways in which most people deceive themselves and

reinterpret phenomena in order to make life bearable. In this

particular case, the concept of a metaphysical subject of actions, a soul, is needed by the weak in order for them to view them selves as acting in a meritorious manner. However, this view

of themselves is not of primary importance for the weak, as can

be seen in the fact that the lambs christen themselves as the

good only as an afterthought?after they have come to regard the birds of prey as evil.

There is, however, a more important reason why belief in

the subject is necessary for the weak, a reason not so evident in the passage above. Just as this picture of the subject enables a weak lamb to see itself as choosing to act in a "good" manner, it also allows the lamb to imagine itself capable of retaliating in the face of some abuse at the hand of a strong bird of prey. That is to say, the concept of the subject enables the weak lamb to regard itself as something other than essentially weak. This

attitude constitutes the "sublime self-deception" that makes the lives of the weak bearable, and in suggesting that the lambs' need to deceive themselves is greater than their desire to view themselves as good, Nietzsche is taking a first step in his de

bunking account of "good" and "evil."




Nietzsche's discussion of these two techniques of self-pres ervation suggests a more specific target for his attack on the

subject. By "the subject," or "the soul," Nietzsche means an

entity that bears a particular kind of causal relation to one's

deeds. He characterizes this entity as "independent [wahlfrei]" and "neutral [indiffere?it]" in GM 1:13 in order to emphasize that it is solely and completely responsible for its effects. No

previous event, or collection of events, can be cited as suffi cient for the occurrence of an action. In this way, the subject is

independent of a causal order, which is exactly what is required in order for the weak to imagine that an agent?itself or an

other?could have acted in a number of different ways in the

very same circumstances in which the action in question?be it

good or evil?actually took place. The subject, in itself "neu

tral," simply picks one action over another and is thus

completely responsible for a choice that does not admit of fur

ther explanation. Thus, the doctrine of freedom of the will that Nietzsche opposes is simply the free causality of such a sub

ject, the causa, sui he ridicules in BGE 21, and the actions of that subject are those events that bear a particular causal re

lation to the subject.

While Nietzsche does not attribute this view of agency to any

single philosopher, one possible target is Descartes, who in his

second meditation includes willing among the attributes of the

thinking subject. In GM 1:13 Nietzsche most likely has Kant in

mind, or more specifically, the doctrine of noumenal freedom that appears in Schopenhauer as well. According to the naive

understanding of this view that Nietzsche seems to endorse, the cause of our actions is not the phenomenal subject but in

stead a supersensible entity free from the phenomenal causal

order, the self as thing in itself mentioned in GM 1:13. More

generally, Nietzsche means to attack the idea of agent causa

tion, or immanent causation, according to which all causal chains ending in actions originate in the causal power of an

agent. On this view, actions are caused but are nonetheless free due to the control that an agent has over its actions.

Nietzsche's opposition to the idea of agent causation could be thought to imply nothing more than a commitment to ex

plaining all events in terms of physical laws, but his emphasis on doing, effecting, and becoming suggests a more exotic view. One helpful passage is found in WS.




[B]elief in freedom of will is incompatible precisely with the idea of a continuous, homogeneous, undivided, indivisible

flowing: it presupposes that every individual action is iso late and indivisible] it is an atomism in the domain of willing and knowing. (WS 11)

Here Nietzsche states what is only implicit in GM 1:13, that

the collection of doings that we are left with once we do away with "the subject" is a collection of interrelated, interdetermin

ing events. This conclusion does not follow directly from the

falsity of the doctrine of the subject. Understanding the world as simply a collection of atoms interacting according to causal laws is also incompatible with agent causation. However,

Nietzsche maintains that even our belief in causal relations

between atoms is nothing more than an anthropomorphism that has no place in a modern world view. In maintaining that we

arrive at a false understanding of the world by generalizing a

false conception of agency, Nietzsche inverts the position of the

friend of agent causation, for whom the concept of an efficient cause is acquired by attending to our own actions.6

For present purposes it does not matter how exactly we in

terpret Nietzsche's claim that the world is simply a set of "do

ings." While he is suspicious of the concept of causality, Nietzsche's claim about doings could be regarded as one pos sible formulation of causal determinism. The central metaphysi cal claim here is that agents and actions are not unique entities, or parts of the metaphysical structure of the world. They are

instead parts in a chain of interrelated events, fundamentally no different from flashes of lightning. This point leads to the

unsettling conclusion, which Nietzsche explicitly endorses, that we have no causal control over our actions.

To reassure the skeptic.?"I have no idea how I am actingl I have no idea how I ought to actl"?you are right, but be sure of this: you will be acted upon\ [du wirst gethan!] at every moment! (D 120)

Nietzsche's "reassurance" here is hollow because it consists not in showing the skeptic what he is doing, or what he ought to

do, but instead in stating that the skeptic in fact has no control over his actions and thus no reason to worry about what he

ought to be doing. As part of a continuous series of events, the

skeptic is "being done" by those events, just like any other ele ment in the causal order.



NIETZSCHE'S GENEALOGY OF MORALS 6 7

One way of appreciating Nietzsche's position on doers and

doings is by comparing it to the conclusions that Thomas Nagel reaches at the end of his "Moral Luck."7 Moral judgment, Nagel observes, has as one of its presuppositions the "condition of

control," the idea that a person cannot be morally assessed for what is due to factors beyond her control (such as her disposi tions to behave, the situations she faces, or the results of her

actions). Nagel argues that a problem then arises for the insti tution of morality itself, for it seems on closer inspection that the condition of control is never met. After formulating this

problem, Nagel states the following:

I believe that in a sense the problem has no solution, be cause something in the idea of agency is incompatible with actions being events, or people being things. . . . Eventually nothing remains which can be ascribed to the responsible self, and we are left with nothing but a larger sequence of

events, which can be deplored or celebrated, but not blamed or praised.8

This last phrase sums up Nietzsche's position on the doer be hind the doing quite well. He holds that agents and actions are

nothing more than parts of a larger sequence of events (doings with no underlying doers) and that the "responsible self?the

subject?does not exist. However, Nietzsche would also insist that the problem defined by Nagel has a solution, albeit a diffi cult one. According to Nietzsche, we "men of knowledge" can do without moral values and moral judgments, as well as the views of agency and freedom that they presuppose. That is to say, Nietzsche believes that it is only the view of agency required for moral judgment that is incompatible with the fact that ac

tions are events and people things.

Locating Nietzsche's target does not, however, serve to illu minate the structure of his argument against the subject. In

fact, the appearance of less than flattering descriptions of the weak in GM I may lead one to believe that Nietzsche's objec tion to the moral view of agency is based primarily upon considerations of value. Nietzsche clearly believes that the val ues "good" and "evil" make possible a form of life that is not of much value. He characterizes the weak as lowly, miserable counterfeiters of value that retard the flourishing of the strong (GM 1:14). This is not to say that the lives of the strong, ma

rauding nobles of GM I represent Nietzsche's alternative to the behavior of the weak proto-Christians he criticizes?for the one




figure in GM that lives beyond good and evil appears only in

the second essay. The nobles of GM I do, however, appear in a

somewhat positive light.

Regardless of what values or ways of life we take to be

Nietzsche's proposed alternatives to good and evil, the ques tion at hand is whether he objects to the doctrine of the subject because he finds it to be of little value, or because he finds it to

be false. While it cannot be denied that Nietzsche delights in

ridiculing moral values and the servile lambs that have faith in them, he also offers us an argument designed to show that the doctrine of the subject is strictly false and, rather surpris

ingly, suggests that this doctrine makes possible a way of life

quite different from that of the lambs of GM I. The doctrine of the subject is, in Nietzsche's eyes, a mere fiction, but it is a

useful one.

The argument against the subject that we find in GM is not an attempt to show that the concept of agent causation is some

how contradictory. Instead, Nietzsche's goal is to explain how this concept arose, and how it and gained importance, by em

ploying a completely naturalistic account of agency?one that does not involve mention of such a subject.9 If this is possible, Nietzsche believes, we will have undermined belief in the sub

ject by providing an account of agency that is simpler and more

elegant. In GM Nietzsche does not state that his argument takes this form, but he does express his approval of arguments of this kind in D 95, where he characterizes "historical refutation" as

the "definitive refutation." Here, Nietzsche argues that a dem onstration of how a belief arose and "acquired its weight and

importance" suffices to undermine the authority of that belief. The two techniques of self-preservation outlined in GM I can

play a role in this project because they demonstrate how belief in the subject became a necessary part of modern life.10 Both the distinctively moral blame and the pleasing self-understand

ing made possible by belief in the subject are components of the Christian view of the world, which Nietzsche regards as

nearly omnipresent in the modern world.

In the second essay of GM, Nietzsche offers the reader what he takes to be a superior account of agency according to which

imputable agents do exist, but are as much a part of the causal order as thunderstorms. This naturalistic account of agency both

completes the historical refutation of the subject begun in GM I

and points forward to Nietzsche's own conception of freedom.




II. Nietzsche's Account of Agency

The second essay of GM begins with the following questions:

To breed an animal with the right to make promises?is that not the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man? is it not the real problem regarding man? (GM 1:1)

Surprisingly, the second essay does not contain an examina tion of this paradoxical task. Nietzsche hints at this turn of events when he states that this task "presupposes as a prepa ratory task that one first makes men to a certain degree necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable" (GM 11:2, first emphasis added). GM II does contain an account of this preparatory task?that of bringing about

regular, predictable behavior in human beings?but does not

examine in any detail the paradoxical task that Nietzsche an nounces at the beginning of the essay, that of breeding an

animal with the right to promise. Nietzsche is most likely al

luding to this fact when he later states that each essay in GM contains "a beginning that is calculated to mislead" (EH, "Ge

nealogy of Morals").

The distinction between the ability to promise that the right to promise is, nonetheless, essential to Nietzsche's account of

agency in GM II. He means for his notion of promising to ac

count for the relation of ownership that exists between agents and their actions. The preparatory task of making human be

ings necessary, uniform, and calculable?capable of "promis

ing"?is therefore the task of producing agents, and Nietzsche's

genealogy of promising is a story about how agents entered a

merely natural world that does not contain a "subject." The right to promise, examined in section III below, constitutes the one

form of free agency that Nietzsche believes to be possible.

Both imputable agents and free agency arise out of the pro cess of socialization described in GM II, which has as its end the minimization of violent behavior that could threaten a so

cial order. Nietzsche proposes to understand relations of non-moral responsibility, simple ownership of actions, as part causal and part conventional, the result of a social practice of

holding responsible and influencing behavior. By portraying responsibility for actions as a product of this social practice, Nietzsche completes his argument against the subject.

Nietzsche understands the function of primitive social insti tutions in terms of the central notion of the opening sections of



7 0 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

GM II, a "promise" found in the creditor-debtor relationship that exists between particular human beings and the social

groups in which they live (GM 11:9). He maintains that within a social group there inevitably arises a need for "five or six"

basic rules of conduct (GM 11:3). When a person breaks these rules and defaults on the loan of security that has been granted

by others, the group is paid back through the act of punish ment. This serves as a kind of payment, Nietzsche suggests, because we enjoy inflicting pain upon others?"to see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more" (GM

11:6). This brute psychological fact, an inversion of Humean

sympathy, constitutes one of Nietzsche's naturalistic premises.

It is important to note that Nietzsche does not think that

members of primitive social groups contract with each other, or that they find it in their interest to act in accordance with

these rules. Rather, he believes that groups of this kind arise when "conquering," "masterly" subjects come in contact with

other humans (GM 11:17). And even these strong subjects are

not responsible for maintaining the social order. The state that

they generate plays this role?"wherever [masterly subjects] appear something new soon arises, a ruling structure that lives."

(GM 11:17. cf. H 99). Thus on Nietzsche's view in GM II, social institutions and the structures of power that support them sim

ply arise in social groups and serve to form human animals into

minimally responsible agents that behave in a new way.

This new behavior can be viewed from two different perspec tives. First, it is the result of a psychological, causal mechanism

that gives rise to a degree of self-regulation in human beings. Nietzsche thinks of this change in terms of bodily drives and

desires. Formerly directed outward in socially unproductive ways, these same drives are now, due to the ever-present threat

of punishment, directed inward in such a way as to make one's behavior conform to the basic social rules mentioned above. The

result of this fear of punishment is "an animal soul turned

against itself," and this abuse at one's own hand results in an

ever-present feeling of displeasure, the "bad conscience" which is the putative topic of the second essay (GM 11:16).

The behavior that arises within the "state" can also be seen as conformity to a convention. The significance of the behavior

produced lies not only in its regularity, but in the fact that this behavior occurs in conformity with a socially instituted norm.

Nietzsche states, for instance, that before the right to promise can be produced,




Man must first of all have become calculable, regular, neces

sary, even in his own image of himself, if he is to be able to stand security for his own future, which is what one who

promises does! (GM II, 1)

To be calculable, regular, and necessary?and thus capable of

promising?is not simply to act in the same way in the future as

one has acted in the past, nor is it to be able (in theory) to pre dict one's own behavior. It is to be calculable in the eyes of

another, or all others, for the reason that one acts in accordance with a common standard of behavior. While Nietzsche maintains

that regular behavior of this kind can be explained as a new

causal mechanism, this behavior also has a new status because it conforms to a norm that is a product of a certain kind of social

group. To say that human beings become calculable in social set

tings is to say that one may reasonably expect from them the behavior that is favored in the social setting in question.

This process can be thought of as the emergence of responsi bility through the act of holding responsible. Individual hu man beings are made accountable through punishment, and thus come to regard some of their behavior as properly theirs. This notion of imputability is Nietzsche's intended replacement for the notion of responsibility employed by the lambs of GM I.

His answer to the question of how events or "doings" come to

have the status of actions involves the causal mechanism of

punishment, which is responsible for the change in behavior found in socialized human beings, as well as the new status of

that behavior in the social context in which it is found. Neither element requires that a human agent be free from the causal order of doing, effecting, and becoming mentioned in GM 1:13, and Nietzsche's account of agency thus portrays human action as a thoroughly natural phenomenon. Not surprisingly, he also inverts our usual understanding of self-regulation and punish

ment. It is the act of holding responsible, and the punishment connected with it, that Nietzsche believes to be responsible for

the control an agent has over its own actions. The idea that a

person deserves punishment because he could have acted dif

ferently is, Nietzsche claims, an "extremely late and subtle form of human judgment" (GM 11:4).

Nietzsche divides the evolution of responsibility, so under

stood, into a number of stages. To be a minimally responsible agent capable of promising (the most basic stage in this pro

gression) is, for Nietzsche, to behave in accordance with a

standard of behavior common to a social group for the reason




that one is held to that standard through punishment and fear

of being punished. In the most basic case, one is held respon sible for the five or six things that one must avoid doing in

order to remain in the social group. Later, social interactions

and social norms become more complex. Arbitrary customs or

traditions are added to the basic norms, forming a set of prac tices constitutive of a particular society, Nietzsche's "morality of custom" [Sittlichkeit der Sitte]. These rules, which Nietzsche

also connects with punishment in Daybreak (D 9), give rise to

further "labor performed by man upon himself," and further

self-regulation of drives (GM 11:2).

Finally, the morality of "good" and "evil" arises, along with the thought that a strong subject chooses to behave in a way that tends to harm the weak, and that the weak choose not to

retaliate. Of course, Nietzsche believes that both of these fur

ther thoughts are completely false. But belief in the fiction of a

doer behind the doing makes it possible for a strong agent to

regard itself as evil. This attitude toward itself, based upon the values "good" and "evil," the metaphysical presuppositions of these values, and the social and religious institutions that make these beliefs effective, then results in acts of self-repression and self-regulation more thorough, and more cruel, than those demanded by the morality of custom. Thus, while Nietzsche

holds that these beliefs in the subject and causal freedom of the will are completely false, he certainly does not deny that

they play an important role in explaining the regularity and

uniformity of our behavior, and indeed, in accounting for the

further self-regulation required for the refinement of agency in general. The moral practice described in GM 1:13 thus con

stitutes a stage in Nietzsche's account of the evolution of agency.

Because it makes possible this naturalistic account of the

morality of "good" and "evil," Nietzsche's discussion of respon

sibility in GM II completes his argument against the existence of the subject and causal freedom of the will. In addition to

showing in GM I how belief in the subject arises and gains importance through the need for self-preservation on the part of the weak, Nietzsche also provides the reader with a naturalistic account of the agents who employ this doctrine. By showing in

GM II how mere human beings are formed into self-regulating agents though a process of socialization?without presuppos

ing an anthropomorphized world?Nietzsche completes his

historical refutation of the doer behind a collection of doings.




III. The Sovereign Individual

Nietzsche's sovereign individual, described in GM 11:2, repre sents his conception of the possibilities open to agents shaped by moral practice, and as such occupies a central role in his later

philosophy. As mentioned above, Nietzsche asserts that self-regu lation in accordance with morality can give rise to the more

complete form of self-regulation he calls the right to promise. The evolution of agency presented in the first two essays of GM thus concludes, in a sense, with Nietzsche's description of free agency at the beginning of the second essay. If one does not see

that the sovereign individual stands at the end of this process of

creating responsibility for action, however, it is possible to over

look its status as an exceptional form of agency in general.

Nietzsche refers to the sovereign individual only in sections 2 and 3 of GM II. He introduces this figure as follows.

If we place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process [of making men necessary, uniform, and regular], where the tree at last brings forth fruit, where society and the moral

ity of custom at last reveal what they have simply been the means to: then we discover that the ripest fruit is the sover

eign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from

morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral [?ber sittlich] (for "autonomous" and "moral" ["sittlich"] are

mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own in

dependent, protracted will and the right to make promises. (GM 11:2)

The remainder of GM 11:2 is devoted to elaborating the essen

tial features of the sovereign individual, and I will simply list them here before proceeding.

1. Uniqueness: The sovereign individual is "like only to

himself," as opposed to mere promising agents that ex ist as "like among like."

2. Liberation from morality of custom: The sovereign indi vidual is unique because it is free from the force of custom.

3. Freedom: Nietzsche describes this figure as having be come free. It is also "autonomous" and, of course, "sovereign."

4. Responsibility: The right to make promises is charac terized as a kind of responsibility.




5. Possession of measure of value: The sovereign individual values other agents according to their right to promise.

6. Possession of a conscience: The awareness of its respon

sibility is manifest in its "conscience."

This final point has led some commentators to believe that

Nietzsche does not view the sovereign individual in an entirely

positive light.11 Nietzsche clearly sees its conscience as arising out of the bad conscience, described in GM 11:16 as a result of

the redirection of drives required by the morality of custom.

However, to think that the origin of the conscience determines

its value and function would be to succumb to one of the "preju dices of philosophers" that Nietzsche ridicules in the first

chapter of BGE: "things of the highest value . . . cannot be de

rived from this transitory, seductive, deceptive, paltry world, from this turmoil of delusion and lust [but rather] from the lap of Being" (BGE 2). Nietzsche's opposition to this idea grounds his genealogical project as well, for as he reminds us, "the cause

of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual em

ployment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart" (GM 11:12). Thus the fact that Nietzsche sees the conscience of

the sovereign individual as the product of the rather gruesome process of socialization that he describes in GM II should not

lead us to conclude that he sees it as being of little worth.

The freedom and responsibility mentioned in points 3 and 4

might also lead one astray.12 While it is true that the responsi

bility produced through the process of "making responsible" in

the first two essays of GM is moral, or proto-moral, Nietzsche's

description of the sovereign individual as the "ripest fruit" of

this process certainly has positive connotations. And while GM 11:2 itself is Nietzsche's clearest description of the post-moral

responsibility that he seeks to explain, a positive conception of

responsibility appears in other works as well. Consider the be

ginning of the section in TI entitled "The error of free will"

(The Four Great Errors, 7).

Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of "free will": we know only too well what it really is?the foulest of all theologians' artifices, aimed at making mankind "respon sible" in their sense, that is dependent upon them. Here I

simply supply the psychology of all "making responsible."

This passage points to one sense in which a person can be re

sponsible?one is responsible insofar as one is held responsible




through moral judgment and religious dogma. After this pas

sage, Nietzsche concludes the section in a remarkable manner.

In a critical discussion of "making responsible" in which re

sponsibility is mentioned four times, Nietzsche does not mention

responsibility (or freedom, for that matter) as a concept that "we immoralists" ought to do without. This indicates that

Nietzsche envisions a form of responsibility that exists outside the moral institutions within which one is held responsible.

In GM Nietzsche clearly views some forms of responsibility as interesting, positive phenomena, even outside of GM 11:2.

Following a brief allusion to an alternative to the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche asks:

Is there sufficient pride, daring, courage, self-confidence available today, sufficient will of the spirit, will to responsi bility [Wille zur Verantwortlichkeit], freedom of will, for "the

philosopher" to be henceforth?possible on earth? (GM 111:10)

That Nietzsche would mention the "will to responsibility" in

opposition to the ascetic ideal indicates that it has some degree of positive worth in Nietzsche's mind.13 The fact that Nietzsche alludes to freedom of will in this passage is instructive as well, for it further confirms Nietzsche's positive attitude toward re

sponsibility in the particular case of the sovereign individual.

This figure, remember, is described as a "master of a free will" and as having "consciousness of this rare freedom" (GM 11:2) in

virtue of standing at the end of the process through which all

responsibility emerges (point 3 above). Nietzsche certainly does not view all forms of responsibility as being of little worth, and there is thus no reason to believe that Nietzsche's sovereign individual is not a positive figure in GM.

Understanding the figure of the sovereign individual and Nietzsche's positive conception of freedom and responsibility requires that we come to terms with the task of breeding an

animal with the right to promise, for in GM 11:2 Nietzsche

equates this right with the form of responsibility that distin

guishes the sovereign individual from the moral agent. Since the responsibility found in a moral agent that possesses the

mere ability to promise requires only that such an agent be

held to a standard of behavior through fear and the institu

tions of punishment described above, one might think that the

right to promise ought to be understood as the capacity to hold

oneself to a standard of behavior.




But this cannot, of course, be a sufficient condition for pos

sessing the right to promise. The "tame man" of GM 11:16 that

has directed its drives inward in order to conform to a system of customs is capable of self-regulation, but Nietzsche describes

this figure as "pregnant with a future," not as standing at the

end, of the process of making responsible. The moral agents who

believe in the subject and causal freedom of the will are also

capable of regulating their own behavior, but they too must fall

short of the right to make promises because, as argued in sec

tion II above, distinctively moral practice serves the same end

as the morality of custom, that of making agents regular and

uniform. But the sovereign individual is, of course, an indi

vidual, like only to itself (point 1 above), which suggests that

the sovereign individual is not a participant in the morality of

custom or the morality of good and evil.

The essential difference between the sovereign individual and

these agents, which are capable of promising but do not possess the right to promise, lies in the fact that the sovereign individual

is "liberated from the morality of custom," or "supramoral

[?bersittlich]" (point 2 above). In a passage from BGE that is

reminiscent of his description of the sovereign individual (BGE

262), Nietzsche points to this relation to morality as the defin

ing characteristic of "the individual" that has survived (?berlebt)

morality and thus "lives beyond" it (?ber die alte Moral. .. hinweg

lebt). However, "living beyond" morality cannot require that one

bear no relation to moral practice, since all agents are a product of these institutions. Thus the essential question is, What dis

tinguishes the individual from moral agents?

Both the tame man of GM 11:16 and the moral agents of GM

I are capable of regulating their own behavior in accordance with a standard of behavior, be it a system of arbitrary cus

toms or the morality of good and evil. But in both cases the

self-regulation is a result of the power that the institution or

moral code exerts upon agents. That is to say, this self-regula tion takes place only because of a force or threat outside of the

agent itself. In GM 11:16, for example, the dominant metaphor is that of a human being "enclosed within the walls of society and of peace" and thus forced to turn against itself and change its own behavior. In GM I, it is the force of religious dogma and

false belief that brings about moral behavior in human beings. The sovereign individual, on the other hand, is aware of its

superiority "over all those who lack the right to promise and



NIETZSCHES GENEALOGY OF MORALS 11

stand as their own guarantors . . ." (GM 11:2), implying that the

sovereign individual does stand as its own guarantor. It is able to regulate its own behavior without depending on the power of

any external institution, and for this reason the sovereign in

dividual possesses the right to promise. The right to promise is thus the capacity to regulate one's own behavior?hold oneself

responsible?without depending upon any external forces.

We are finally in the position to provide an interpretation of Nietzsche's "task" of breeding an animal with the right to make

promises?a task that Nietzsche himself does not explain. Breeding an animal with the right to make promises obviously requires that one first produce, through moral institutions,

imputable agents capable of "promising" and regulating their own behavior. Second, one must locate an agent that can regu late its own behavior without relying on the force of social norms or institutions?but how does one find such an agent? Nietzsche

gives the reader a hint when he refers to the sovereign individual's peers as "the strong and reliable" (GM 11:2). Those

agents that potentially possess the right to promise are simply those that would have been the strong agents described in GM 1:13 and GM 111:14, the nobles and natural predators, had they not been born into a society with a history of custom and moral

practice. But Nietzsche does not believe that all strong agents posses the right to promise. Most strong agents, he maintains,

currently live according to the norms of custom and morality. Thus, there must be a third step in the task of breeding an ani mal with the right to promise.

This third step involves finding an agent that no longer con

siders moral institutions and moral norms to be binding for the reason that these institutions and norms have been discred ited. Freeing oneself from the force of these norms thus requires that one consider the possession of true beliefs about morality to be of a higher value than the benefits of acting in accordance with moral norms. For Nietzsche, then, a robust commitment to the truth (and possibly an acquaintance with GM) is required for a moral agent to become a free agent.

When Nietzsche asks of the task of breeding an animal with the right to make promises, "is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man?" (GM 11:1), his use of the word "paradoxical" is no mere rhetorical flourish.

Producing an autonomous agent requires that one first produce




essentially heteronomous moral agents that act as they do be cause of the power that resides in these rules of behavior and

the institutions that enforce them. Thus Nietzsche justifies his

claim in GM 11:2 that "'autonomous' and 'moral' [sittlich/] are

mutually exclusive," even though he does maintain that au

tonomy arises from morality. The production of an agent with

the right to promise is, consequently, an example of a thing

originating out of its opposite, just what Nietzsche claims to be

unthinkable to a "metaphysician" (BGE 2).

Free will, as Nietzsche understands it, is thus nothing like

the free causality of a doer behind its doings. To possess free

dom of the will is, instead, to be autonomous?capable of

regulating one's own behavior without depending on the force

of custom, morality, and the particular institutions which they require. Thus, Nietzsche's positive conception of freedom is a

compatibilist one. To possess free will is, for Nietzsche, to be

autonomous, and this is compatible with being a part of a natu

ral order. More generally, Nietzsche believes that viewing the

world as a collection of interrelated events is compatible with

normative assessment, but not with moral assessment. While we have no control over the capacities and traits with which we are born (as Nagel also points out), Nietzsche maintains that these are precisely the kinds of things that determine whether one is an autonomous, admirable, healthy, well-constituted,

"good" agent, or a base, sick, flawed, "bad" agent (where "good" and "bad" are used in the noble sense outlined in GM I).

As parts of such a world, not all agents possess a capacity for freedom. Since Nietzsche views freedom as the social modi fication of the strength found in some, but not all, human beings, freedom is attainable only for those human beings that are born with a certain amount of strength. This is why Nietzsche as

serts, in BGE 21, that "in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills," not free or unfree wills. To be sure, Nietzsche's discussion of strength is no real explanation of the difference between "lambs" and "birds of prey." These examples of weak ness and strength, which might make one believe that Nietzsche is concerned with physical strength, are used not to illustrate

the kind of strength that Nietzsche has in mind, but instead to

suggest that having strength is a matter of luck. The birds of

prey are simply fortunate, and the lambs are not?no further

explanation is possible.




This emergence of freedom from strength suggests that the

sovereign individual represents a new form of nobility, one that

is possible only after the emergence of custom and morality.14 Nietzsche is alluding to this point in his characterization of

the sovereign individual as possessing a "measure of value"

(point 5 above) by which it is bound to "honor its peers" and

"reserve a kick for the feeble windbags who promise without the right to do so" (GM 11:2). Honoring one's peers for their

virtues, being aware of one's own virtues, and having only scorn

for those without these virtues is characteristic of the noble

mode of valuation that Nietzsche describes in GM 1:10. The ideal of autonomy, which is the sole measure of value employed by the sovereign individual, thus constitutes a post-moral noble value in Nietzsche's eyes. As the one value that the sovereign individual employs when looking out upon others, as well as

the "one goal" that Nietzsche mentions in a number of his works

(e.g. GM 111:23, Z 1:15, H 107), autonomy as described in GM 11:2 could be the single most important facet of the general way of life that Nietzsche seeks to describe.15

Reed College

NOTES

1. I have used Walter Kaufmanns translations of Nietzsche's works,

except in the case of Human, All Too Human and Daybreak, where I have consulted the Cambridge editions of Hollingdale's translations, edited by Richard Schacht (Human, All Too Human) and Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Daybreak). On the Genealogy of Morals is trans lated by Kaufmann and Hollingdale. I have also relied upon the Kritische

Studienausgabe, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. The only change I have made in the translations is the substitution of "morality of custom'' for "morality of mores,'' when necessary, in order to stan

dardize terminology. Works are cited in the text according to the following acronyms: (A) The Antichrist, (BT) The Birth of Tragedy; (D) Daybreak; (H) Human, All Too Human; (M) Assorted Opinions and Maxims; (WS)

The Wanderer and his Shadow ; (GS) The Gay Science; (Z) Thus Spoke Zarathustra; (BGE) Beyond Good and Evil; (GM) On the Genealogy of Morals; (TI) Twilight of the Idols; (EH) Ecce Homo.

2. Nietzsche himself directs the reader of GM to these earlier works

(See GM Prefaced, GM Prefaced, and GM 11:2), and he also states that in GM he assumes knowledge of his earlier writings (GM Preface:8).




3. When I speak of "the subject" in what follows, I mean to refer to the view that Nietzsche attacks in GM 1:13.

4. Kaufmann translates udas Thun" as "the deed," but it could also be translated as "the doing," or "the activity." The latter alternatives are

preferable because in GM 1:13 Nietzsche is drawing a distinction be tween objects and events, and reading "the deed" for <(das Thun" makes

the latter sound overly substantive.

5. Bernard Williams emphasizes the distinctive character of moral blame in "Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology" in Nietzsche, Gene

alogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 237-247.

6. Roderick Chisholm discusses this claim, as well as its source, in Reid's work, in "Human Freedom and the Self in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 24-35.

7. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck" in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson, pp. 174-186.

8. Nagel, p. 184.

9. Nietzsche's naturalism requires only that we account for the char

acteristics that make modern human beings unique without postulating special kinds of entities (God, the soul, the will, moral laws) in order to

explain this fact. For a good discussion of the difficulties involved in

providing a precise definition of this sort of naturalism, see Williams, pp. 239-241.

10. Nietzsche's views on the "seduction of grammar" in GM 1:13 and BGE 16-17 might also account for the origin of the concept of the sub

ject, but there is no space here to examine this possibility.

11. See, for example, Daniel Conway's Nietzsche and the Political (Lon don: Routledge, 1997), p. 19, and Lawrence Hatab's A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy (Chicago: Open Court, 1992), p. 37.

12. Hatab also appeals to the responsibility mentioned in GM 11:2 in

arguing that the sovereign individual is not a positive figure in GM. See Hatab, p. 37.

13. See also TI, Skirmishes, 38.

14. Richard White also emphasizes this point. See his Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997),

pp. 145-147.

15. Many thanks to B?atrice Longuenesse, Clare McRae, Alexander Nehamas, and Mathias Risse.



Date post:	20-Oct-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	josh6692
View:	22 times
Download:	11 times

Morality, Agency, And Freedom in Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals"

Documents