SOPHIA (2014) 53:261–273

DOI 10.1007/s11841-014-0418-0

‘Beginning Something New’: Control,

Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher

Beverley Clack

Published online: 31 May 2014

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract This paper suggests ways in which a philosophy modelled as dance provides
the means of challenging political structures that emphasise control and constraint at the
expense of spontaneity and creativity. Through combining Arendt’s claim that sponta-
neity is the quintessential human quality with Nietzsche’s modelling of philosophy as
disruptive dancing, the possibilities of modelling philosophy as dance are explored.
Envisaging philosophical practice in this way provides a corrective to the prioritising of
certainty in philosophical method, thus enabling further reflection on what it means to
promote human flourishing.

Keywords Arendt . Nietzsche . Dance . Philosophy of religion . Control . Spontaneity .

Totalitarianism

Introduction

‘It’s pretty clear to me that it should be happening because once you have some statistics
you can start to do something about it’ (Sir Richard Dannatt, BBC News 2013).

‘Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of
strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political,
social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.’ (Arendt ([1948] 1968): 459)

‘That the deepest spirit must also be the most frivolous, this is almost the formula for
my philosophy.’ (Nietzsche in letter to Ferdinand Avenarius, 1888, in Hatab 2005: 161)

One of the most innovative aspects of feminist philosophy of religion has been its
emphasis on the significance of the body for shaping philosophical reflection
(Anderson 2012; Hollywood 2001; Jantzen 1998). More recently, feminists have turned
specifically to dance in order to provide a model for a philosophy grounded in the

B. Clack (*)
Department of History, Philosophy and Religion, Oxford Brookes University, Harcourt Hill Campus,
Oxford OX2 9AT, UK
e-mail: bclack@brookes.ac.uk
262 B. Clack

experience of the lived body (Fraleigh 2004; LaMothe 2006). The aim of this paper is
to consider how this philosophical model might provide a response to the kind of
political structures that emphasise control and constraint at the expense of spontaneity
and creativity.
In order to provide a context for these reflections, I begin with Hannah Arendt’s
analysis of totalitarianism, focusing on her contention that the practices and structures
of such regimes offer extreme examples of what happens when the desire to control
individuals transcends the value placed on spontaneous action. In so doing, my interest
is with exposing the unacknowledged assumptions that support such practices and
which are discernible—albeit in significantly less extreme forms—in some of the
practices employed to regulate life in contemporary Western democratic societies.1
At the heart of this discussion is the desire to consider the conditions which promote
human flourishing (Jantzen 1998). With Arendt, I argue for spontaneity as the quin-
tessential human quality which reveals ‘man’s [sic] power to begin something new out
of his own resources’ (1968: 455). 2 If the possibility of spontaneous action is not
recognised in social structures, the ability of individuals and communities to flourish is
severely curtailed. In what follows, I explore the possibilities of modelling philosophy
as dance, suggesting that envisaging philosophical practice in this way provides an
important corrective to the prioritising of certainty in philosophical method.

Totalitarian Bureaucracy and the Dream of Control

Hannah Arendt’s exploration of totalitarianism pays careful attention not just to the
history of such movements but also to the values that support them. Her excavation of
these values provides a useful way of exploring some of the preoccupations of today’s
democratic societies. Arendt is cautious about the extent to which her conclusions can
be applied directly to the structures of non-totalitarian, democratic governments and is
at pains to argue that simple correlations between such different systems of government
cannot legitimately be made. 3 Yet much in the manner that we might read Michel
Foucault or Marshall McLuhan,4 Arendt’s writing has the power to challenge contem-
porary assumptions by encouraging her reader to consider their values and

1
See for example Nixon (2012, chapter 1) for reflections on how a target-led approach to higher education has
affected understandings of what a university is for.
2
I do not intend to discuss Arendt’s use of the male generic. Her relationship to feminism is complex: see
Young-Bruehl (1996) and also Jantzen (1998) for application of Arendt’s ideas to an explicitly feminist
philosophy.
3
For example, Arendt makes a distinction between the bureaucracy of totalitarian governments and ‘the mere
outgrowth and deformation of civil services which frequently accomplished the decline of the nation-state—
as, notably, in France’ (1968: 244). In the case of the latter, she notes that there has never been a suggestion
that such officialdom rules the country. ‘The French atmosphere of government has become one of ineffi-
ciency and vexations; but it has not created an aura of pseudomysticism’ (1968: 245).
4
As McLuhan (2005) notes in his comments on the relationship between ‘environment and anti-
environment’, any society’s norms and attitudes can be taken for granted that its members find it difficult to
consider the possibility that there might be any alternative way of being. We fail to see ‘our environment’ and
it takes conscious effort to make that which is unconsciously accepted open to critical reflection. For Foucault,
describing the way in which past societies lived makes us more able to challenge those aspects of our society
that we take for granted (see [1975] 1991 for one example of his method).
Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher 263

preoccupations through the lens of a different time and place. Through this process, the
strange becomes familiar and the familiar strange. By tracing the values that support
totalitarian regulation, it is possible to consider and challenge some of the unacknowl-
edged assumptions upon which the governance of contemporary Western societies
seem to depend.
For example, Arendt draws attention to the use totalitarian movements make of
notions of scientific progress. The appeal to progress is not unusual in contemporary
democratic societies, and Arendt argues that the commitment to ‘scientific’ solutions
reflects a more general ‘obsession with science which has characterised the Western
world since the rise of mathematics and physics in the sixteenth century’ (1968: 346).
The solutions offered by totalitarian ideologies to human problems are merely extreme
versions of a more generalised belief in science as something ‘that will magically cure
the evils of existence and transform the nature of man’ (1968: 346; citing Eric
Voegelin). Arendt is not convinced by such scientific optimism; but rather than dismiss
such hopes, she looks more deeply at why such ideas are so attractive. The suggestion
that forces ‘outside the human’ will lead inexorably to the triumph of the movement
(1968: 143) is reassuring, given the unpredictability of mutable human life. Yet the
belief in the ‘inevitability’ of progress that accompanies such visions is not so strong
that it can overlook the potentially destabilising effects of free human action. Human
actions need to be controlled to attain that vision of the golden future. Thus, ‘reckless
optimism and reckless despair’ (1968: vii) sit together, for the belief in ‘inevitable’
progress and the fear of failure are, Arendt points out, ‘two sides of the same medal;…
both are articles of superstition, not of faith’ (1968: vii).
The anxiety that such progress might not be achieved informs the way in which
such movements approach the ‘problem’ of individual actions: ‘No ideology which
aims at the explanation of all historical events of the past and at mapping out the
course of all events of the future can bear the unpredictability which springs from
the fact that men are creative, that they can bring forward something so new that
nobody ever foresaw it’ (1968: 458). And here is the challenge: not just for
totalitarian governments, I would suggest, but also for their democratic heirs. Can
civil society accommodate something ‘so new nobody ever foresaw it’; for while
the new can be exciting, it also has the potential to destabilise current practices or
ideas. That which is new is always accompanied by uncertainty: and, perhaps not
surprisingly, it can seem easier for governments or policymakers to focus on
regulative practices designed to channel the vagaries of human behaviour towards
prescribed and predictable ends.
The anxiety which surrounds uncertainty might go some way to explaining the
dependence on bureaucratic systems not just in totalitarian forms of government but
also in contemporary democracies. Bureaucracies operate on the basis that a prescribed
end can be achieved through the implementation of rules and procedures (Weber 1947).
Such systems give the appearance of being ‘rational’ and easy to manage in comparison
with dealing with individuals with all their idiosyncrasies and irrationalities. While this
might be true, the effect of such a judgement is that the human realm, made up of such
individuals and thus beset with uncertainty, becomes less trustworthy than ‘the system’
itself.
Franz Kafka’s novels provide the most notable examples of the attempt to capture
the terror of what it feels like for the individual caught up in a system whose veracity
264 B. Clack

cannot be questioned. 5 Understanding the effect on the bureaucrat—the individual

invested in ensuring the success of this system—is equally important, for it illuminates
the wider social effects of belief in such structures. The bureaucrat is to be successful
‘as a mere function’ (1968: 215) and ‘aloof’ from ordinary human concerns that might
obscure the focus on achieving the prescribed social goals.6 Arendt’s famous depiction
of Adolf Eichmann provides a concrete example of such bureaucratic aloofness in
practice. To be successful as a function, one must resist the kind of thoughtfulness that
would connect one’s actions with the lives of others. Eichmann may well be the ‘new
type of criminal…who commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh
impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong’ (Arendt 1964: 276). What
bothers Arendt is that the cultivation of this thoughtlessness applies more widely,
pervading many parts of the workplace. As a worker, I am a function: and we might
consider the widespread replacement of ideas of vocation with notions of profession-
alism. To have a vocation is to feel called to a particular way of life, not just to a
particular set of work practices. For Arendt, seeing oneself merely as a function
detaches one’s actions from life with others. This leads her to conclude that a system
which depends for its ‘smooth operation’ on the detachment of one’s actions from
wider experience is more inhuman than other historical examples of unjust societies:

In comparison, exploitation, oppression, or corruption look like safeguards of

human dignity, because exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed, cor-
ruptor and corrupted, still live in the same world, share the same goals, fight each
other for the possession of the same things; and it is this tertium comparationis
which aloofness destroyed (1968: 212).

For Arendt, then, it is the effect of bureaucratic structures on human relationships

which is of most concern. Far from being abstract and valueless, and thus somehow
‘neutral’, such structures reflect attitudes detrimental to human flourishing. Under such
systems of government, the mutability of human life and relationship cease to be
viewed as essential parts of what it is to be human and are viewed instead as problems
in need of regulation. The abstract and the impersonal are viewed more highly than the
specific and the personal, with the result that ‘bureaucracy is always a government of
experts, of an “experienced minority” which has to resist as well as it knows how the
constant pressure from “the inexperienced majority”’ (1968: 214).
Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism not only explores the roots of such movements
but also casts light on deep existential anxieties. We live in an uncertain and unpre-
dictable world. The desire that it might not be so is met in the statements of totalitarian
ideologies. The scientific revolution, similarly, holds out the hope for a society free
from the messiness of mutable life. We think there ‘should’ be ways of avoiding such
ills and the suffering that attends to them, and we look to governments and institutions
to help construct societies free of risk and pain.7

5
For a particularly fine example, see Kafka’s Der Process (The Trial) (1914).
6
Arendt identifies this ideal in the methods of administration and the promotion of this kind of administrator
in the structures developed by the British to effectively manage their empire (1968: 212).
7
See Hélène Joffe (1999) for an analysis of the links between this ‘risk society’ and the attempt to control the
transient.
Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher 265

Such proffered solutions come at a price. The more we seek to constrain the
unpredictable, the more constrained our own lives become, the more limited our
accounts of what it is to be human. In The Human Condition, Arendt expresses her
bewilderment at the triumph of economics as the main way of viewing the world and
human relationships (1998: 42). Historically, economics was merely a sub-discipline of
politics; now, it dominates public discourse. For Arendt, its rise reflects the success of
utilitarian ethics: what matters is equated with what is deemed most useful for any
particular community, and increasingly, that notion of use is defined in economic terms.
We might, for example, consider the effect of economic thinking on higher education
(Nussbaum 2010). Education is now deemed important, not because it contributes to
the common good, but because it paves the way for the kind of technological skills that
contribute to economic success. Education is of value principally as a means of ‘turning
knowledge into money’ (Nixon 2012: 7). As Michael Sandel (2012) points out, market
values have increasingly driven out other norms, to the extent that we rarely pause to
ask if it is appropriate for all human action to be boiled down to the achievement of
economic targets. We rarely ask about the propriety of the question ‘is it value for
money?’ for judging the worth of any human activity or political policy.
The dominance of economics has a corresponding effect on the way in which human
beings are conceived. To use Foucault’s phrase, individuals are now understood as
Homo oeconomicus: economic units who interact with each other in the market place
(Lemke 2001). What matters is utilising the talents of the individual for the needs of the
economy; what matters are activities that promote economic growth, now deemed the
goal of all human action. Arendt might be commenting on the effects of totalitarianism
on the individual, but we could equally apply her words to this economic vision of the
state and its citizens: ‘The particular reality of the individual person appears against the
background of a spurious reality of the general and universal, shrinks into a negligible
quantity or is submerged in the stream of dynamic movement of the universal itself…
All that matters is embodied in the moving movement itself; every idea, every value has
vanished into a welter of superstitious pseudoscientific immanence’ (1968: 249).
How might a philosopher respond to a society whose values are increasingly shaped
by utility and regulation? Martha Nussbaum (2004, 2010) and Tzvetan Todorov (2002)
reassert the importance of humanity, a category that reflects the glorious messiness and
mutability of human experience. Arendt’s response, and what forms the context for
what follows, is to restate the importance of spontaneous action. In the ability to do
something new, to act in ways that are surprising, there is the basis, not just for a richer
account of what it is to be human than is provided by current economic models but also
the framework for a socially engaged philosophy that challenges the assumptions of its
age.

Philosophy as Disruptive Dancing: the Promise (and Threat) of Spontaneity

Arendt captures something of the oppressive, stifling and ultimately dehumanising

nature of what happens when the desire for control, predictability and certainty come to
dominate the political domain. If the possibility of spontaneous action challenges those
concerned with attaining certain outcomes (Arendt 1968: 455), it is through fostering
its place in human relations that resistance to oppressive systems can be grounded.
266 B. Clack

At this point, the question of the kind of philosophical practice useful for such an
endeavour comes to the fore. At the outset, Arendt would appear to have little to offer
this discussion: she is, after all, highly critical of philosophy as a mode of practice, not
least because it is ‘burdened by tradition’8 and cannot easily respond to the plurality of
positions that characterises her vision of the kind of public realm conducive to the
flourishing of individuals. 9 Yet her depiction of thought as a disruptive practice has
much to offer the philosopher striving to challenge habitual ways of thinking. As Dana
Villa notes, for Arendt ‘thinking is intrinsically dangerous’ (Villa: 1996: 186; my
emphasis), for it resists that which is taken for granted and refuses to accept the
assumptions of time and place. Its very destructiveness, however, opens up the
possibility of the kind of creative possibilities Arendt associates with spontaneity.
Thinking opens up the possibility ‘to begin something new’.
Here, cultivating thoughtfulness—what we might identify with the common pursuit
of philosophy—meets her account of what makes for a well-lived life. Her commitment
to the Vita Activa—the life lived with others in the public realm—necessitates the
recognition of plurality. To accept ‘that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the
world’ (Arendt 1998: 7) disrupts the idea that there could be only one way forward, one
creed or political party. Whatever the practicalities of this individualistic position for
achieving political ends, 10 it does highlight the impossibility of certainty in a plural
world: ‘the reason why we are never able to foretell with certainty the outcome and end
of any action is simply that action has no end’ (1998: 233). Action is never isolated
from the responses of others. How others will respond to an action is unknown. This
unpredictability is disorientating, not to say frightening, and as she notes ‘it has always
been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a
substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the
haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in the plurality of agents’ (1998:
220). In other words, we try to construct systems that make predictable that which is
not. Yet uncertainty is inherent in the ‘startling unexpectedness’ (Arendt 1998: 178) of
creativity. If we fetishise certainty, we miss the fact that ‘the new always happens
against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all
practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in
the guise of a miracle’ (Arendt 1998: 178).
A healthy civic life needs to be capable of supporting such miracles. The commit-
ment to lineal progress runs the risk of factoring out that which has the capacity to
surprise. It is important, at this point, to consider whether the same might be true of
philosophy. If philosophy is to aid the cultivation of the creative newness that Arendt so
values, it would seem necessary to consider the extent to which its methods are capable
of fostering the surprise of the new. A philosophical method understood principally in
8
This comment is taken from a conversation with Günter Gaus (in Baehr 2000: 4).
9
There is also the question of the political failure of philosophers to identify injustice as injustice; most
notably, her mentor and erstwhile lover Heidegger’s inability to see Nazism as something to be resisted not
accepted. As Dana Villa describes it, in Heidegger there is found ‘the “strange alliance” between philosophy
and thoughtlessness’ (1996: 192). Abstract thought of the kind in which Heidegger excelled means little if
there is no ‘care for the world’ (Villa. D 1996: 192).
10
As the UK Labour Party expresses it in its statement of intent: ‘we believe that by the strength of our
common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone’, and for those of us involved in practical politics,
it is difficult to conceive of the kind of political system that Arendt supports where the pressure of individual
voices is able to achieve more than collective action.
Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher 267

terms of defining, refining or pinning things down is likely to entrench rather than
disrupt the desires for certainty and predictability that support bureaucratic regulation
and which resist the possibility of surprise.11
We might pause at this point to consider what resistance to the surprise of the new
might look like. From 1950 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East Germans lived
under the constant gaze of the state secret police. At one point, one full-time Stasi
officer was employed for every 166 East Germans, making it the most-monitored
society in history. In what Anna Funder describes as Stasiland (2011), spontaneous
action became almost impossible. During her investigation of what this meant for the
lives of ordinary East Germans, Funder came across a film clip of something called ‘the
Lipsi dance’ which provides a memorable image of the stultifying effects of these
attempts at total control. This dance looks peculiar in the extreme: a couple stand side-
by-side like Greek dancers; they raise their forearms and bend apart ‘like teapots’. Then
they break into the footsteps of an Irish jig, before waltzing, jumping in the air and
completing the whole thing with hands on hips in an apparent nod to Russian dance.
Funder is at first bemused by this inelegant dance and then realises that it is precisely
what ‘a dance invented by a committee’ would look like. The Lipsi dance was, she
realises, a state-sponsored attempt to manufacture a ‘safe’ alternative to the perceived
perils of Western ‘decadent rock ‘n’ roll’ (2011: 126–127).
This distorted dance raises questions in dramatic form about whether philosophical
practice enables the cultivation of creativity and spontaneity. Is the philosophical desire
to contain and define limiting for an appraisal of the variety of experiences open to
human beings? Is it possible for philosophical practice to be envisaged along the lines
of the free-form dancing which so horrified the Stasi, and which as a result challenges
desires for control and certainty? Put more poetically: can the philosopher be not just a
dancer, but a good dancer?
This question echoes Nietzsche’s comment: ‘I wouldn’t know what the spirit of a
philosopher might more want to be than a good dancer’ (Gay Science §381; 2001:
246). And it is from Nietzsche that the model of philosophy as disruptive dance
emerges. Feminist philosophers have long turned to Nietzsche for inspiration. 12
Given his reputation as a misogynist, this might sound surprising: he is, after all,
famous for his maxim that when visiting woman you should remember your whip
([1883–85] 1969: 91). Yet the playfulness of his writing has provided feminists with
resources for disrupting the status quo, allowing the space for new ways of thinking.13
Often the misogyny and the potential of his approach sit side-by-side. When
Nietzsche claims that ‘life is a woman’ (GS §339; 2001: 193), the feminist reader is
likely to dread what is coming next. Yet as he plays with this idea, a rather different
reading than one might anticipate emerges, based upon an account of life that celebrates
rather than fears its complexity. The ‘vita femina’ is ‘promising, resisting, bashful,
mocking, compassionate and seductive’ (GS §339; 2001: 193). His phrasing is rich
with movement: promising, resisting; bashful, mocking; compassionate, seductive. To
follow his prose is to move back and forth, across and between. These shifting
11
For a philosophy of religion that seeks to offer a similarly engaged account of critical thought through
application of continental thought, see Goodchild (2002).
12
For a variety of interpretations, see Kelly Oliver and Marilyn Pearsall (1998).
13
For examples of feminists reading Nietzsche, see Oliver and Pearsall (1998), and particularly their
introduction, ‘Why Feminists Read Nietzsche.’
268 B. Clack

perspectives bring to mind the disorientating movement which accompanies his proc-
lamation of the death of God a little earlier in the same work (GS §125; 2001: 119–
120). In the time of the death of God, it is no longer possible to be sure of what is up or
down, before or behind. A kind of vertigo is experienced as the old values which
depend on belief in God are displaced and new ones sought.
The ‘vita femina’, though, suggests a rather more playful, somehow less anxious
movement than that which accompanies the death of God and the ‘revaluation of all
values’ (Anti-Christ §13; 1990). The movement that frames it has more in
common with the breathless enjoyment of dancing than with the nausea of vertigo.
Yet this dance is, like its darker counterpart, disruptive, for there is no obvious place
where we will end up; no certain destination for the path the dance takes. And
Nietzsche’s philosophical practice mirrors this sense of unpredictability: he is constant-
ly finding new partners only to lose them again; a reflection of his nervousness about
finding a final resting place for thought.14
Nietzsche’s method—for want of a better term—seems peculiarly appropriate for
challenging the all-too-human desire for certainty and predictability. In order to ac-
knowledge the shifting perspectives of creative, plural space, Nietzsche mocks the
model of philosopher as ‘the serious beast’ (GS §327; 2001: 183). In making a place for
frivolity, Nietzsche challenges the desires that seem to drive philosophical argument;
namely, the possibility of a neat argument and a final conclusion. Such comforting
certainty is not open to the dancing philosopher, and, as Bernard Williams puts it, for
Nietzsche this method reflects the belief that ‘any life worth living must involve daring,
individuality and creative bloody mindedness’ (in Nietzsche 2001: xix).
This open, unconstrained approach to life reflects the challenge of eternal recurrence
(GS §341; 2001: 194–195). Called to say ‘yes’ to life in all its messy complexity, 15
Nietzsche’s philosopher must resist the comfort of one method or one way of thinking.
Not for nothing is the title The Gay Science drawn from the term of the troubadours for
the art of song (2001: x): philosophy, like courtly love, should be passionate, flirtatious
and playful, constantly in the process of moving from one position to the next.
Not surprising, then, that Nietzsche should model the philosopher as dancer. The
qualities necessary to be a good dancer are fundamental to his view of what it is to be a
good philosopher: independence, swiftness, an ability to wander, suppleness and
strength (GS §381; 2001: 246). Note that there is nothing here of the jerky movements
and passionless touching of the Lipsi dance. Nietzsche’s dance is shaped by a gleeful-
ness which emanates from the elemental forces of the soul: a dance that has more in
common with the frenzied orgies of the maenads, followers of Nietzsche’s beloved
Dionysus, god of wine and the orgy, than with the measured steps of a waltz.
Here, his exuberant dance meets the potential darkness of the time of the death of God.
Think of the death of Pentheus at the hands of the dancing maenads in Euripides’ play
The Bacchae. There are no limits placed upon the Nietzschean dance: and in such
depictions of chaotic violence, we get a sense of the dangers of and fears surrounding
spontaneous action. Spontaneity can lead to creativity: but it can also lead to violence and

14
See Zweig ([1925] 2013 pp. 54–56) for a description of this restlessness perfectly exemplified in
Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner.
15
As Giles Fraser puts it, under eternal recurrence: ‘“salvation” is about learning to love the view, whatever it
is and however ugly’ (2002: 110).
Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher 269

the riot. Yet for Nietzsche, dance of this kind should be the philosopher’s ideal, art and
piety: ‘his “service of God”’ (GS §381; 2001: 246). There is something magical,
something religious about this commitment to the dance. It moves us beyond considering
actions in terms of their ‘usefulness’ for a preconceived end and instead acts as a
celebration of human life and experience, in all its glorious—and terrifying—messiness.
Nietzsche’s dance, then, has much in common with Arendt’s ‘surprise of the new’.16
The dance opens things up; it does not close things down.17 It acts, perhaps, as a poetic
rendition of Arendt’s claim that there is no predictable outcome for action, for any action
always meets the unpredictability of human response. For this reason, Arendt places
considerable weight on promising and forgiving. In the promise, we seek to provide
some sense of security to the other ([1958] 1998: 243–247)18; in forgiveness, there is
offered the possibility of a future if actions are bad or go wrong ([1958] 1998: 237).
Both promising and forgiving depend upon the relationship between people, and it is
here that we find a point of departure between Arendt’s spontaneity and Nietzsche’s
dance. Nietzschean dance may be exuberant, but its possibilities can feel somewhat
limited when the disconnection between the role it plays in his writing and its absence
in his lived experience is considered. Nietzsche’s ideal of the dance is at its most
energetic just at the point where he is entering his final years of increased isolation and
loneliness. 19 His philosophy may well be grounded in the claim that thought is
dependent upon movement rather than books; he may tell his reader that the first
question to be asked about the value of a book, a person, or a piece of music should be
‘can they dance?’ (Gay Science §366; 2001: 230). Yet, like Rousseau, it is not so much
dance with another person as solitary walks that form the basis for his philosophical
practice.20
Stefan Zweig’s reflections on Nietzsche from the 1920s, recently translated by the
poet Will Stone, claim Nietzsche’s intense loneliness and interiority lead to his final
collapse (Zweig [1925] 2013: 73–77). In Zweig’s account, Nietzsche appears as a tragic
figure whose willingness to use his feelings and emotions as resources for his philos-
ophy comes at the price of ordinary human relationships. For this reason, perhaps, the
philosopher who wishes to challenge the overemphasis on control in totalitarian and
bureaucratic societies might feel obliged to part company with the Nietzschean dancer:
more so, if that philosopher is a feminist philosopher. Feminist philosophy more than
any other part of the discipline has sought to reassert the significance of relationship for
understanding the role this feature of human life should play in our philosophising.21
Nietzsche’s lone dancer cannot be enough for a philosophy that wants to highlight the
possibilities and problems of our life together.

16
Given that she cites him extensively in The Human Condition, this should not surprise us.
17
‘The ideal of a spirit that plays naively i.e. not deliberately but from overflowing abundance and power’
(Gay Science §382; 2001: 247)
18
Note that Arendt shapes her reflections on ‘the promise’ through Nietzsche who ‘saw in the faculty of
promises (the “memory of the will”, as he called it) the very distinction which marks off human from animal
life’ ([1958] 1998: 245).
19
See Lesley Chamberlain’s (1996) moving and insightful account of Nietzsche’s final year before his
collapse.
20
See Jean-Jacques Rousseau ([1782] 1992) for a similar philosophy framed by reflections on the importance
of movement for forming one’s ideas.
21
We might think here of Nel Noddings, Carol Gilligan, Beverly Harrison: feminist philosophers who have all
drawn attention to the importance of relationship for philosophising.
270 B. Clack

And so we come to the question that has been beneath the surface throughout this
paper: how to cope with the experience of being mutable, vulnerable creatures in a
world of chance and change? One response is suggested by the Lipsi dance: seek the
illusion of total control; not just of the other but also of the passions that might be
unleashed by the decadent dancer. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, an opposite response is
suggested: unleash the passions and see where they take you. The wildness of
Nietzsche’s dance may stand in stark contrast to the overly ordered moves of the
Lipsi dance; it may have the power to disrupt habitual ways of thinking and being, but
when seen in the context of Nietzsche’s life, it, too, would seem to reflect powerful
anxieties shaping human behaviour. The solitary, impassioned dancer of his words is
not enough to provide a model for how we might respond to the pains of life. The
dancer cannot always dance alone: they need the presence of others.

Dancing Together Over the Void

The introduction of the other person at this point brings us to the necessity of thinking
about order and spontaneity as part of a lived relationship. It is not so much that we
should eschew any kind of control in order to affirm the spontaneous. Rather, there is
something important about thinking of the role they both play in any integrated form of
life. Once again, the metaphor of dance can provide a useful way of thinking about how
we shape our public realm as well as the way in which philosophical practice might aid
this endeavour.
Dance takes many forms. A ballroom dancing competition, for example, will ask the
judges to pay particular attention to the detail of the steps; the extent to which the
dancers conform to the prescribed dance. Yet even so, attention must also be paid to the
expression given to these prescribed moves by the dancers: it is not enough just to stick
rigidly to the template.
Nietzsche’s dance appears to resist even rules of this kind. The dance he envisages is
free; the joy experienced in dancing emanating from the freedom to move, uncon-
strained, between places and partners. We might shift our ground, however, and think
how vital the role is of the one with whom we are sharing the dance. Joy is most joyful
when it is shared. For a dance to be joyful there must be good will between the dancers.
This acceptance by the other allows for the misplaced foot, the mistaken step. Far from
leading to disaster, these are capable of forming the basis for laughter. ‘Failure’ in the
dance of partners prepared to create together a safe space for play loses its relationship
with anxiety. ‘Failure’ can now be shared, free from the crippling guilt at having
‘messed things up’.
This shared experience challenges understandings of order and control. In making
room for the spontaneous, there is no guarantee of success: the dance might descend
into chaos; it might cease to be graceful and become broken and distorted. It might, as
in flamenco, fail either to be performed ‘correctly’ or to elicit the moment of ‘duende’
when the dance is transfigured by the passion of the dancer that is also communicated
to their audience. 22 To dance is not to avoid anxiety; it is not to avoid or escape the
pains of existence. As one dancer describes it:

22
For a readable and entertaining account of this quest for ‘duende’, see Webster (2004).
Control, Spontaneity and the Dancing Philosopher 271

‘The colours, the sounds, the pain and the ecstasy all become one in this moment,
and I know that the only I there is, is in all of this. We must not flee from our experience
of pain, but stand in its power.’ (Fraleigh 2004: 70–71)
In the spontaneous, the unplanned, the uncontrolled, we are confronted with that
which sits on the margins of our experience, invariably unacknowledged and ignored,
namely, death, loss and what Lacan appropriately called ‘the Real’.23 These are, if you
like, the things that cannot be controlled; the things that remind us of the limits of
human attempts to order experience. In the dance, it is possible to play with these
realities. As in all spontaneous movement, a step of faith is needed for it is always
possible that we might lose our footing or miss our step. Such moments remind us of
our vulnerability, fallibility and, ultimately, our mortality. In such moments, we dis-
cover both the possibilities and the terrors of being human. Dance, a form of play, is
capable of transforming these realities that cause us such anxiety. If for Freud, play
offered a way of mastering reality and thus reasserting the illusion of control (Freud
1920: 14–16), for Winnicott, play provides a space for creativity, a place where new
things can happen that transform old anxieties (Winnicott [1971] 2005).
Here, we start to see the value of a vision of philosophy modelled on dance. The
assumptions we might have of what philosophy involves shift as the dancing philos-
opher looks upon the quest for certainty with a more sceptical eye. Recognising this
playfulness allows the philosopher to look beyond the ‘mistakes’ in an argument to
what the writer or speaker was attempting to say. Likewise, it disrupts the belief that
there is but one answer. It makes us aware of the different outcomes possible for any
thought or action.
The playfulness of dance also offers the possibility of a philosophy grounded in
relationship and therefore prepared to go beyond Nietzsche’s model of the lone dancer.
To get the most from the dance, the philosopher needs relationship, just as reflection
needs community. We move together and then apart; we shift our ground; we see things
differently. In that relational dance, there is freedom, but as Arendt reminds us, we must
also practice promise and forgiveness if the safety of that space for our fellow dancers is
to be secured.

Conclusion

When cultures privilege one way of being over another, they invariably lose their way.
24
A society that seeks to regulate behaviour must also allow room for free expression if
its members are to flourish. Totalitarian regimes show the limits of the desire to control;
similarly, the desire in contemporary Western economies for an ordered society with
guaranteed outcomes runs the risk of marginalising the things that cannot be measured
in life. If the things that are pursued are limited to those which cultivate economic
growth, the things in life that cannot be measured—love, relationship, trust, generos-
ity—are in danger of being ignored. If the belief in progress is overemphasised, we run
the risk of failing to engage adequately with the limits of human endeavour, revealed

23
See Bowie (1991: 88–121) for a discussion of the multilayered nature of this concept in Lacan’s work.
24
In The Birth of Tragedy (1886), Nietzsche draws attention to the fragile relationship between the wildness of
Dionysus and the intellectual rationality of Apollo: out of the unity of both come Greek drama and the arts.
272 B. Clack

most powerfully in the experiences of death and loss.25 In idealising growth, we resist
accepting that the planet has limited resources and thus avoid engaging with the
imperative to find sustainable ways of living.26
The desire for a society where unpredictability is eradicated comes at a price. In
seeking such a society, we forget the limits placed upon mutable life, while at the same
time shutting down possibilities for how to live. One of the most important tasks facing
Western societies is to find ways of engaging with the limits of life in order to help find
new ways of living. Can we find ways of accepting and embracing the fact that control
can never be absolute, that in order to flourish we need laughter and openness? A
philosophy modelled along the lines of dance is able to help broaden perspectives,
challenging assumptions and disrupting habitual ways of being. In so doing, it holds
out the possibility of making life more joyful as well.

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