EDUCATION WITH A HAMMER: NIETZSCHE IN ACTION

Paul Zisman
Mary Washington College
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
1. Introduction

Books which toach on# to danco. — Thsts are writers who, by

representing the impossible as possible and speaking of
morality and genius as though both were merely a matter of
wanting them, a mere whim and caprice, evoke a feeling of
-
high spirited freedom, as though man were standing on tiptoe
and compelled to dance for sheer joy. “From the Souls of Artists
and Writers," *206. Human. All to Human.
A new voice is heard in educational theory, that of Nietzsche’s. Plato's
Republic and Rousseau’s Emile are landmarks in the literature on education.
They represent the contours of the discourse in educational theory. Only
Dewey's experimentalism challenges Plato and Rousseau. The thesis of this
paper is that Nietzsche’s insights into the individual and his world create
another stream of discourse outside of the contours established by Plato and
Rousseau, and differs from Dewey in tone and depth of critique.
Nietzsche is generally not recognized as an educational theorist.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher who lived between 1644 and
1900, began his scholarly career as a philologist in Greek and Latin, in which
even as a young student he displayed extraordinary talent. He broke with
classic philology, however, at 26 years of age when he began the publication
of a steady stream of books on philosophy ending with his mental collapse in
1669, eleven years before his death. His philosophy is a strange blend of
biting critical analysis of modern assumptions , having the effect of driving
one to despair, and an extraordinary mythic vision, having the effect of
driving one into an elevated sense of self . Very little is specifically devoted
to the usual educational themes. However, when we examine his philosophy
as education in itself, we are greatly rewarded. The resulting "educational
theory" presents on implied criticism of current educational programs.
2. Why Take Nietzsche as an Educator
Boro tho waysofmon part If you wish to strivo for poaco of
soul andploasuro, then holiovo;ifyou wish to ho a dovotoo of
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truth, thoninqulro. better to His Sister, June 11, 1665.
-
Uhrostr&inodhonosty- Nietzsche unites both style and content to
underscore his total commitment to honesty in the face of terrifying truths.
Paul Zisman, All rights reserved.
2
He says that "tiarstiness must be among one's habits, if one is to be happy
and cheerful among nothing but hard truths” (Reader. #12). Again: "I am not
a man, I am dynamite” because "my truth is dreadful: for hitherto the tie
has been called truth...” Reader.*13). Nietzsche somehow embodies in
himself the philosophical conflicts of his age, experiencing them on an
emotional plane unusual among philosophers. His honesty is vicious and
therefore disconcerting: "I am by far the most terrible human being that has
existed so far; this does not preclude the possibility that I shall be the most
beneficial" (Ecce Homo "Why I am a destiny”* 2 ) . In spite of the threat of
hurting us, and perhaps because of the promise of hitherto unrevealed
knowledge which is contained in this threat, we are hooked.
-
Nietssctie as Counterpoint- This honesty towards truth, which
actually is an attempt to undermine truth, draws attention to Nietzsche's
pivotal position in the history of ideas. Mark Warren in Nietzsche and

this book is central to the transition from metaphysical to situated — from

-
modern to postmodern ways of thinking about humans as agents” (p. 1).
Nietzsche explains that the idol in Twilight of the Idols: How One
Philosophizes with a Hammer written the year before he went mad, refers
,

to "what has been called truth so far”: “I am the first to hold in my hands
the measure for 'truths'; I am the first who is able to decide. Just as if a
second consciousness had grown in me...And in all seriousness: nobody
before me knew the right way, the way up : (Ecce Homo). Nietzsche's
,

philosophy counters Plato's high regard for reason and Rousseau's high
regard for nature. Furthermore, he attempts to philosophize without
asserting a dogma, a characteristic of postmoden thought (Warren, p. ix)
Metssofre vs. Plato. -Nietzsche s philosophy does not reject reason but
'
 -
lowers its rank in value. He regards Greek Post Socratic philosophy as
overly dependent on reason, to the point of over-extending its usefulness:
The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws
itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency: one was in
-
peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or be absurdly
rational.. (Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates" #10.)
For Plato, truth is found not in appearances, which are always changing, but
in the unchanging. The highest level of cognition, the Dialectic, does not
travel downwards to appearances, rather it travels upward to apprehend the
foundation of ideals, their first principle:
"So here, the summit of the intelligible world is reached in

philosophic discussion by one who aspires, through the

discourse of reason unaided by any of the senses, to make his
way in every case to the essential reality and perseveres until
:0 .

3
he has grasped by pure intelligence the very nature of Goodness
itself. This journey is what we call Dialectic" (Cornford, trans.,
Republic vii. 532).
,

In contrast Nietzsche extols appearances as the source of what we, thus

seeming to reverse Plato's ranking of Being above Becoming. Actually, as we
will see, he collapses them as categories.

Nietzsche Sousse&u --Nietzsche writes severely of Rousseau, more

than he might have had he been familiar with his complete works (Strong, p.
39 n. 36). He views Rousseau’s egalitarianism as a reduction of every
individual, even the highest flowering of humanity, to the sameness of the
herd. And Rousseau's call to “return to nature" he regards as an appeal to
the most base in an individual (Twilight of the Idols. "Expeditions of an
Untimely Man," *46). To Nietzsche, nature is not something different from
society: everything is within nature, or everything is within a perspective.
The ranking of nature as either more or less than society makes no sense:
how can something be taken out of nature. Nietzsche thus attacks this
dichotomy as groundless.
The Individual !and the State. --Nietzsche is a new voice in educational
theory in that he offers an alternative to Plato's and Rousseau's
preoccupation with harmonizing the individual and the state. He takes the
philosopher as an educator par excellence.

The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits — as the

man of the most comprehensive responsibility who has the

-
conscience for the over all development of man — this
philosopher will make use of religions for his project of
cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever
Evil,*61)
"

Nietzsche does not conceive of his ideal individual within the state, but
rather over the state, yet nonetheless affecting the morality of the state. He
exhorts the individual to raise himself above the conformist morality
embodied by the state and claimed by the unthinking mob: 'The whole of
European morality is based upon what is useful to the herd...Themore
dangerousa quality seems to theherd, themore thoroughlyisit proscribed
(Will to Power.*276). This differs from Plato who requires that the

-
philosopher king return to the world of appearances, sacrificing his pleasure
of being in the world of pure forms. Similarly, Rousseau has Emile enter into
tlie community of the state. Nietzsche's ideal individual, in contrast, shapes
not the state so much as civilization within which states find their
presuppositions. The ideal individual does not serve the state, but rattier the
4
state is subordinate to them for their values. The individual's task is to rise
above her particular culture and become an exemplar.
M otescJto and Domy: To say that Nietzsche's voice is new is not to
'

deny the American pragmatist's unique place in the history of educational

ideas. This is not the place to compare Nietzsche to Dewey. Nietzsche was
working in his own way to free himself from the Platonic tradition, and his
response to it is quite different from Dewey’s in tone and in the depth of its
critique. Yet in passing we can take note of a similar framing of the problem.
In one of Nietzsche's few direct references to education has a ring familiar to
pragmatists:
(H]ow can the individual be adapted to the enormously
diversified demands of culture without being distracted by
-
them and his individuality dispersed in short, how can the
individual be set in place within the counterpoint of the private
and public culture, how can he play the main theme and at the
same time the subordinate theme as well?"
Human. "Tokens of Higher and Lower Culture" #242).

-
Niotesdzo's&adagogie 7&ai: Although Nietzsche's philosophy does not
flow from the particular problems of education, and he never identified his
project in educational terms, I believe he follow Plato and Rousseau in
conceiving philosophy as, what might be called, character development, and
thus subordinates social and political aims to educational ones (Cooper, p.
112). Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche's allegory, his counterpoint to
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Magnus, Chapter 6), and a clear indication that
Nietzsche is certainly doing educational philosophy of a type. Stern even
goes so far as to say:
Throughout his work his pedagogic intention must be seen as a
mode of the philosophical; there is a sense in which his
' philosophical speculation ,even atits mostmetaphysical,does

not stray far beyond the pedagogic programme. And this

programme is, quite simply the creation of a finer and nobler
species of man. (Stern, 1979, p. 97)
In fact, according to Lamport, Nietzsche’s work as a whole can be taken as a
teaching, as he himself wanted be remembered, from Ecce Homo we read:

“Through Nietzsche we are all abJo to educate ourselves against our age
because through him we possess the advantage of really knowing this age"
—
(Lamport follows Nietzsche's suggestion of replacing Schopenhauer's name
with us own in the passage, 1986, p. 245).

Will to Educate. —\i Nietzsche is doing education

" ", then what vision
does he hold for his student? The "goal" of Nietzsche's philosophy is not to
5
create an educational system, but rather to create the philosophical climate
-
necessary for the rise of the Self Overcoming Person (Ubermensch). Such a
person is "a higher type" who rises above "collective mankind ”, as Nietzsche
Reasserts
that such persons are "constantly appearing in the most various parts of the
earth and from the most various cultures" but these are a luckyhit " , Such
individuals, or even tribes of them, have never been cultivated by deliberate
intention, a condition that Nietzsche hopes to remedy.
It follows that a Nietzschean education entails nothing less than a
complete transformation of the spirit. Since his ideas have never been
organized into an educational essperiment, I will outline a rough sketch of
what it might consist.. I need a subject, who I will call "Emily". We find
Emily as an unusually bright and industrious college student who seeks the
ultimate in knowledge. She might be called an "intellectual Don Juan" by
Nietzsche (Reader. *172): one who derives pleasure not in having
conquered but in the conquest of truths. She is so enamored of knowledge
that she wants to spend her life involved in it, and so she naturally wants to
become a teacher.
One further matter must be addressed before proceeding. Who shall
be Emily's teacher? Nietzsche's answer (Human.*267): "As a thinker one
should speak only of self-education." How can Emily be taught to stand on
her own two feet, to establish a foundation for her values if she is
dependent on a teacher? Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an illustration of the
-
self cultivation of a teacher. In contrast to Plato and Rousseau, who provide
accounts of how their pupils develop, Nietzsche's allegory is an account of the
transformation of a teacher. Zarathustra begins by addressing the throngs,
finding that unsuccessful he cultivates a small group of disciples (the higher
men), finding even that unsatisfactory he finally retreats into solitude. This
is not Zarathustra's failure, indeed as teacher education we might count it
as a success. According to Lamport:
It shows Zarathustra preparing himself to become the teacher of
eternal retum....By moving from all to none [disciples],
Nietzsche's book shows that there ejdsts as yet no audience for
the teaching that Zarathustra gradually learns, but it is the aim
of the book to create the audience that it shows Zarathustra
failing to find." (Lamport, p. 7)
4. Overthrowing Idols
WMtmates£$roti? To go to meet simultaneously one's
greatest sorrow and one's greatest hope.
6
Whatd& jwu toJJovojn? In this: that the weight of ail things
must be determined anew.

What dossyou eonstionco say? — 'You should become him who

you are.' (Reader. #217)
One approach to Nietzsche's thought that might be helpful here is the
"medical analogy/' suggested by Magnus (p. 7; see also Kaufmann, 1950, p.

66). The modem age is decaying after a long illness, perhaps since Plato.
-
The philosopher physician must make a diagnosis and offer a prescription.
The illness is nihilism, and the remedy is the transformation of values.
-
Nietzsche's intent is clear despite the non linear turn of his argument, which
goes like this: If our present values are based on eternal truths, and since
no absolute truth can be substantiated independent of its content, as
becomes obvious to anyone who probes its genealogy, then this truth is
erected to avoid the truth of nihilism, to avoid the world devoid of ultimate
meaning. Yet the truth of nihilism is like any other ultimate truth, illusory.
Granting that no ultimate truth exists, we are free to create truths, or should
we say, free to create illusions, that is, revalue values according to our own
spirit. This should foe an occasion for rejoicing, and not a romantic longing
for an age of certainties.
Thus, Nietzsche's philosophy has two facets, a critical and an
affirmative one. The former, I will designate Overthrowing Idols, is a
type of negative education, a frontal assault on conventional wisdom and
morality, penetrating to their root assumptions and showing them to be
merely appearances.
The last thing I should promise would be to "improve"
mankind. No new idols are erected by me; let the old ones
learn what feet of clay mean. Overthrowingidols (my word for
"ideals") — that comes closer to being part of my craft One has
deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to
precisely the extent to which one has mendaciously invented an
ideal world. (Eece Homo. "Preface,” *2)
For Emily, this means that she must first labor to learn about the cultural
idols upon which are built her value assumptions. Then she must uncover
their basic nihilistic underpinnings. The affirmative aspect of Nietzsche
(sometimes he refers to it as "experimental philosophy") I designate as The
Spirit of Dionysius: Saying Yes to the Powerin One's Seif and Life.
This is a type of positive education in which Emily learns to express her self
actively and thus to create her self as an exemplar for her culture. This
section treats "Overthrowing Idols". The subsequent section treats “The
Spirit of Dionysius".
7
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CameiSpirit Learning to ZtfAv’ Nietzsche's describes three stages of
development in "Of Three Metamorphoses/ from Zarathustra (Reader.
*12) as preparatory to the journey of self-transformation: to the camel
spirit, from camel spirit to lion spirit, from lion spirit to the child spirit .
First, the spirit must become like a camel, capable of carrying the heavy
burden of her culture, her civilization. The camel seeks discomfort and
sickness in order to gain strength by overcoming them. The camels motto
might be, as Nietzsche says of the military school of life: "What does not kill
me makes me stronger.” (Reader p. 281) But the camel also has a serious
,

goal: she must suffer the hardships of learning about her tradition. So Emily
must immerse herself in the knowledge of culture and civilization. And, to
paraphrase Nietzsche, like the camel hurrying laden into the desert, thus
Emily hurries into her desert.
The Spirit of the Lien: Confronting Idois-What is this desert? This
desert is the emptiness that underlies all traditional values. Nietzsche in "Of
the Three Metamorphoses" asks why the spirit must transform into lion
when the camel endures its burden so well. He answers that the strength of
the lion is needed to hunt out "illusion and caprice even in the holiest, that it
may seal freedom from its love” of old values. The camel’s spirit is prepared
to metamorphose into a lion from the strength it has gained from sacrifice
and effort. The burden of tradition is necessary so that the lion knows
where to hunt Why does this hunt take such great courage and strength
that only the king of beasts will suffice? The spirit of the lion must go
against the grain of her culture, and even more, go against the grain of her
own attachment to traditional knowledge, and even more, to go against the
grain of her revulsion for nihilism.
Which "idols” should we confront? Nihilism can affect us on
four levels: the metaphysical sense of external reality, the psychological
sense of self, the religious sense of God, and the existential significance of
life. In regard to the first idol, Nietzsche refutes the Kantian notion of the
“thing -in-itself.“ He notes the general tendency of philosophers to look at
appearances as paintings, and “to draw conclusions about the being which
produced the painting" (Reader.*166) Some philosophers say that

appearances actually, reflect even if only through distortion, things-inthemselves,

while others reject the connection of the ultimate reality — the

--
metaphysical with the conditioned reality of the world appearing before us.
Nietzsche does not refute these positions in this passage from his book,
Human All to Human, but brings up the possibility "that which we men call

life and experience — has gradually become, is indeed still fully in process of
becoming..." He warns that to regard this world of becoming as a fixed
“magnitude" creates "errors and fantasies", necessary errors for human life,

6-
but errors nonetheless, Perhaps, he suggests, the rigors of scientific
thinking itself will demonstrate how this world as an idea arose and by
scientific detachment such thinking will lift us above the world, and even
above science itself, so at last we can laugh at our creations. For what
"appeared to be so much, indeed everything, ...is actually empty, that is to

say empty of meaning" Reader.*166). In sum, Nietzsche does not say that
nothing exists. He also does not say that what does exist is some absolute
being. What he does say is that what does exist, exists as eternal flux.
The second "idol" to hammer at is that of a permanent self . Emily
finally accepts the nothingness of permanent external objects. But she
claims that since nothing is objective, then it must be subjective. Nietzsche
responds:
"Everything is subjective," you say; but even this is
interpretation. The "subject" is not something given, it is

-
something added and projected behind what there is. Finally,
it is necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation?
*461)
Why should the self be taken as unitary? Nietzsche posits the body as "a
social structure composed of many souls..."(Reader .*204). He regards the
inner world as phenomenology, just as the outer world is sensed as
appearances (Will *479). To say that the self is unitary is to create the
"fiction" that a multiplicity of states are similar, “it is we who first created

the 'similarity * of these states" (Will. 465) rather than their actually being
similar. With such like arguments, Nietzsche throws into question the
notion of a solid seif.
The third "idol" is the belief in a higher power. Emily declares that
even if there is no subjectivity, she can still counton there being some
purpose for her existence, and some source to return to at the end of her
existence. Nietzsche does not argue against God's existence directly,
Kaufmann (1950, p. 60) even prefers to think of Nietzsche as an agnostic, but
he puts this illusion "on ice," as he does with so many other cherished beliefs,
by showing why it was invented. We use the notion of God to explain the
power we feel in ourselves when the sell goes beyond what we customarily
feel. Nietzsche claims that God is our explanation for a moment of good
health. God can be used as a rationale for our need to sacrifice and for the
opposite need to bask in abundance without guilt. For Nietzsche, God goes
the way of other perspectives. His declaration of "God is dead" is not gloating
so much as an announcement of the fact. In some instances, God seems to
stand for all artifices of certainty, striving for absolutes, seeking unchanging
beings.
9

-
Nausoa of /radical Nihilism. Overthrowing the first three idols leads
to a single conclusion, the bankruptcy of all conventional values, or radical
nihilism:
Radicalnihilism is the conviction of an absolute untenability of
existence when it comes to the highest values one recognises;
plus the realization that we lack the least right to posit a
-
beyond or an in itself of things that might be "divine" or
Emily must face this conclusion without flinching, to flinch would set in
motion another chain of being, another set of conceptual creations that
repeat the error of denying life as it becomes. From Emily's eyes the scales
covering over appearances have fallen (the purpose of the lion spirit), but
the tendency is to regenerate them, to shield oneself from the terrifying
truth of life by erecting transcendental significance: "What does nihilism
mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking;
“why?" finds no answer." (Will to Power #2 ) Can Emily look at life, retain the
insight mat it has no significance, and still not deny it? Can she withstand
the emptiness and not fall into depression, into pessimism that throws her
into orbit, into another round of concept-making?
Nietzsche (Reader. "231) proposes a test: "What if a demon crept after
you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: This life, as
you live it nowand Have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times
without number...' He suggests that if this thought does not transform you,
1

it might crush you. If it crushes you, “you will throw yourself down and
gnash your teeth." If it transforms you, you would praise the demon as
divine. But the question does not call for a response now, rather it calls for
the cultivation of an attitude for saying "yes" to life, a life eternally returning
in exactly the same form it is now, down to its minutest detail. Here is how
Nietzsche challenges Emily: "Or how well disposed towards yourself and
towards life would you have to become to have nogreater desire man for
this ultimate eternal sanction and seal?" She needs to find a way to affirm
her life in ail its details, to cultivate an attitude mat would compel her to
praise the demon as divine, to praise the Eternal Return of me Same Life as
divine.
Tho Spirit of the Child A Now Beginning: While the lion has the
strength for the hunt, it has not the capacity to create new values. Thus, me
spirit must transform into the "innocence and forgetfulness" of a child, so me
child represents the new beginning. Nietzsche’s tone mirrors this
transformation to hopefulness:
10
Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of
creation: the spirit now wills itsownwill, the spirit sundered
from the world now wins itsownworld (Reader. *12)
,

The spirit of the child is fresh and unassuming. It is shorn of the illusions
carried by the camel and has benefited from the lion’s courage to
thoroughly destroy that burden. It is no longer fighting against anything; it
can go upward to new creations, of its own hand. The lion created the space
for new creations, now the spirit of the child must "will its own will", assert
its own ground for life. The spirit is now ready for Nietzsche’s new teaching,
presented by Zarathustra (Lampert, p. 35).
5- The Spirit of Dionysius: Saying Yes to the Power in One’s Seif
and Life
For th# Now Jlw

—.. .Today everybody permits himself the

expression of his wish and his dearest thought...I want to learn
more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in
things..And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be
-
only a Yes sayer. (The Gav Science. *276)
Emily has now developed to the point of the child in the parable "On
Three Metamorpheses,” a new beginning is possible. Emily is prepared for
the transformation from the conventional person, one within the mass of
humanity, to the self-overflowing person, one above the mass of humanity,
an individual in the sense of individuated and joyously in love with her own
power and the power of life. Nietzsche gives voice to tills new direction
away from the negation of his critical philosophy and toward the “Yes" of his
"experimental philosophy”:

[T]o a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without

-
subtraction, exception, or selection it wants the eternal
'

circulation: — the same things, the same logic

and illogic of
entanglements. The higheststatea philosopher can attain:to
stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence —my formula for
this is amor Mi (Will.*1041)
In this single formula of "amor fati", or love of fate, we find drawn together a
bundle of meanings that direct Emily down Nietzsche’s "new path to a “Yes”.

While this path is by no means linear-a Nietzschean path could never be

linear

—we can propose a loose two-phase structure for the purpose of

explication. In the first phase, Emily affirms her self as will to power. In
the second, she recognizes in the eternal return an impersonal will to power
that manifests in her particular life, transforming it into a Dionysian life.
The heightened level of these experiences may appear overly abstract and
beyond reach, but apparently they were quite tangible for Nietzsche in his
11
own life. I will draw on Nietzsche's writings to provide as much flesh as I
can understand, while not going beyond what he describes.
Phase One: Affirming The Will to Power in One's Seif
Inarticulate chaotic world. Nietzsche sides with Heraclitus against
Plato: "...Heraclitus will always be right in this, that being is an empty
fiction. The 'apparent' world is the only one: the ‘real’ world has only been
lyingly added .." (Twilight. “ 'Reason' in Philosophy," *2). Even the apparent,
though, is created if that implies any ordering of sensations. For Nietzsche
the world of appearances in the artistic sense, i.e., perceptual, is also falsified
by “selection" and "correction", (ibid.*61 The search for a metaphysical
substratum of the senses is futile, for even if one could be found, its
inaccessibility makes it useless. (Hollingdale, Twilight. Appendix D.) To reject
metaphysics is also to reject the dichotomy between the real and apparent:
"We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the apparent world

perhaps?...But no! with thereal world we .have also abolished the apparent
world! (Twilight. “How the Real World Became a Myth). Nietzsche wonders
where to find the sense organ to comprehend the metaphysical world, and
for that matter, where is the organ to "posit even this antithesis"..(Will.
*563)- What is the world to Nietzsche then? Can anything positive at ail foe
said? “Shall I show it to you in my mirror?", he asks, perhaps mocking us.
Then he characterizes the world as chaos:
This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without
end...that does not expend itself but only transforms itself ...a sea
of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing,
eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of
recurrence,"(Wm, *10671
The necessity of appearances-Thm is the world of the eternal return
in its raw chaotic state, before a person shapes it according to her needs.
And these needs are not trivial or extravagant: "iWle needed appearance in
-
order to be able to live.."(Will.*563) A necessity is not a truth, however,
but it does indicate that humans cannot live in “the formless unformuiable
world of the chaos of sensations" (Will. *569). Thus, to say something is a
necessity is to say that it is valued. It is not simply a matter of selfpreservation,
-
however, because this implies a steady state of affairs. To live
is not merely to survive but to enhance one's being. Nietzsche's slogan "will
to power", we will see, is how an individual affirms her existence in the
chaos of undulating and contradictory forces.
Stamping valueson the world In the passage entitled "On SelfOvercoming," in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche unravels his perspective
12
of the will to power and the play of forces within the individual. First he
presents the will to power as the possibility that we humans can Know
something:
You want to mat# all being thinkable, for you doubt with wellfounded suspicion that it is
already thinkable. But it shall yield
and bend for you. Thus your will wants it. It shall become
smooth and serve the spirit as its mirror and reflection. That is

your whole will, you who are wisest:a will to power — when you
speak of good and evil too, and of valuations. You still want to
create the world before which you can kneel: that is your
ultimate hope and intoxication. (Zarathustra. II "On SeifOvercoming").
This is Nietzsche's answer to the nausea of radical nihilism: The world is
ultimately indifferent to us, having no purpose. Nor is there any other
world: the philosopher's metaphysics and the cleric's afterworld are pure
inventions, convincingly portrayed by the power of reason. This does not
deny that we are among the forces at play in this ultimately random world.
We can experience our aliveness in surges of power, and we become

intoxicated: “What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will
to power, power itself in man" (Reader. *209). And what is power, then?
Power is the creation of being: “To stamp upon becoming the character of

being — that is the supreme will to power." (Magnus, p. 125, translates Will to
Power *617). The lesson here for Emily is that the very discovery that our
idols have clay feet affirms the human drive to create worlds.
To obey. In a broader sense, Nietzsche finds a drive for dominance in
ail that exists: "Only where life is, there is also will: not will to life, but -so I
-
teach you will to power” (Reader.*203). To assert this, however, is not to
say that only that which dominates exists. In fact, quite the opposite
becomes necessary. In the passage "On Self-Overcoming, we find this
principle: "Whatever lives, obeys." For once being is stamped on a cluster of
forces, it becomes a controlling concept which demands its acceptance to
retain its power. Thus, even while we create our world, we must kneel
before it and accept its rule. A will to power assumes relationships, one
thing having higher rank than an other. The commander needs the
commanded, and vice versa.
Self-commanding. We find the ruler which calls for obedience in
unexpected places. Zarathustra states the next principle: "he who cannot
obey himself is commanded." Naturally, the will to power can be exercised
over others, in raw displays of dominance. But this is a reactive maneuver
of a will to power alienated from itself. When one cannot obey oneself, then
one's will to power wanes, falling under control of life-defeating forces. For
13
that which loves life, will exercise its will to life, and life expands when the
will to power expands. (Nietzsche here seems to move very dose to Dewey's
view of growth) What enhances the will to power? Further in the passage,
Zarathustra exclaims: "And life itself confided this secret to me: 'Behold,' it
said, I am Wat whichmust greatest source of strength for the will
"
aiwaysovertime itself . " c
Emily learns that the
v , from the internal

struggle for
-
self control. Yet this is no small task, given that when she commands
herself, she must obey her own laws, and what is more, "become the judge,
the avenger, and the victim of [her] own law.” Furthermore, the need of
power to enhance itself compels the individual to surpass herself .
THe agon of drives mWinWe seif — It seems strange to speak of the
self overcoming itself . This implies a plurality of selves. Yet this is what
Nietzsche experiences: "A man who mils commands something within
himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience."
(Beyond Good and Evil.*19). He goes on to say in the same place that we
feel the sensations of being commanded: "constraint, impulsion, pressure,
resistance and motion" and nevertheless we "disregard this duality" and take
the effect, that is the action of obedience, as the self. He sums it up: “In all
wiling it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the
basis...of a social structure composed of many 'souls' ." Nietzsche was
enamored with the Greek notion of “agon", the competition or struggle among
forces. Here within the self he finds, as he finds everywhere, the agon. If
the self is an agon of wills how then is there any freedom at all? In a

-
passage on self mastery in his book Daybreak (5109), after Nietzsche
identifies six means of "combating the vehemence of a drive ", he then
,

questions our ability to choose any of the methods. Our intellect has not the
power to combat a drive, but rather it is possessed by a drive which uses it
to subordinate the other drives. Thus, there is a struggle among drives, and
the intellect is in the passive position of "taking sides." Emily learns that to
overcome a drive in herself, she must align the consciousness with certain
forces already present.
Power turned againstWe seif— What drives should be valued and
enhanced? As usual, Nietzsche is much clearer about what should be
negated. In this regard, Nietzsche is the master psychologist who discovers
repression: "All instincts which do not discharge themselves outwardly turn
inwardte —this is what I call the deepening and intensifying of man: thus it
was that man first developed what he afterwards called his 'soul' "(Reader.
*92). The "instincts of freedom," which Nietzsche equates with the will to
power, are "turned backwards againstman fumseif " and constitute the
origin of "bad conscience" (Ibid.). Bad r science is the reaction to social
inhibitions, the "walls of society" necessary to bring humans into peaceful
14
coexistence. Yet bad conscience reveals itself in an individual taking sides
against Herself: "...this instinct for freed >m pushed back and repressed,
incarcerated within and finally able to discharge and vent itself only on
itself..." (Genealogy. 11 *17). The insti ts are then gratified by

" subterranean" means, that is, without -wareness of the individual. When
these impulses are projected outward, instead of against oneself as in the
condition of bad conscience, then rass&atiBMBt is exhibited. Ressentiment is
the projection of one's own poisonious emotions on to a scapegoat (in
psychoanalytic terms, "projection identification ”), but without actually doing
physical harm. Thus it is "imagery revenge" by using the image of someone
defined as "other" as an effigy (Genealogy *10). Hence, Emily learns that
when the will to power is repressed it expends itself reactively rather than
straightforwardly (Deleuze, 1962, Chapter 2). The self then becomes
-
confused, taking even the subtlest self assertion as the fullest, and thereby
denying itself full activation.
Nietzsche uses this notion to chop away at the conventional morality
of "love thy neighbor", which is based on bad conscience and ressentiment.
The precept of “love thy neighbor" gives an advantage to the one who
expresses it since he benefits from his neighbor 's love. Thus, the underlying
motivation for such altruistic precepts is selfishness, just the opposite of
what is being preached (Reader.*61). Emily learns that the conventional
foundation for morality masks this basic condition for life, the will to power,
and thereby is against life since it weakens an individual's ability to respond
-
in her own favor and fully exercise her capacity for self assertion.

Overcoming conflicting <&taas --Now that Emily has learned of the

consequences of repressed will to power, what can she do to express her will
to power actively rather than reactively? When drives are ail on equal
footing, energy is sapped by gratifying them all equally. A drive becomes
strong through expressing its vehemence and subduing the vehemence of
the vying drives. Zarathustra sings: “I love Mm who does not want too many
virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for
fate to cling to" (Zarathustra. "Preface"*4)). From this Emily might
understand that conflicting internal drives undermine one’s will to power.
“Overcoming” implies its complement, "going under". For as one drive
of the self ascends, others must submerge. Yet, we know from Nietzsche's

-
views on bad conscience that this going under should not lead to a battening
down of all drives. Unsettling passions must be conquered but repression is
not the answer, sublimation of conquered drives is:
15
He subdued monsters, he solved riddles: but he must still
redeem his own monsters and riddles, changing them into
heavenly children. (Zarathustra. "On Those Who Are Sublime")
Passions, Emily learns, must be transformed into joys (Ibid. "On Enjoying and
Suffering the Passions") Overcoming is not simply a weeding out of drives
until a single or few strong ones remain. It involves undoing repressed
drives so that a new conception of self arises. As one sense of self "goes
under" another arises above, over the former self . Nietzsche's formula for
this aspect of self-overcoming is “Ubermensch", or the "over person", that is
-
the self overcoming person.
-
TAo solfls virtue mado visits The seif created through bad
conscience is surpassed through a process of identifying with a virtue. In
Zarathustra’s Prologue (Zarathustra. *4) , we find: 1love him whose soul is
overfull so that he forgets himself ...”, and "I love him who keeps back no
drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely..."
-
A possible interpretation is that the energy for self expression is usually
dispersed among conflicting drives, which in their combination create a
reactive self. Such a self is born of a diminished will to power, whereas an
active Dionysian self is bom of fullness. Dionysius becomes a symbol for
Nietzsche: "a formula for tire highest affirmation, born of fullness, of
 -
overfullness, a Yes saying without reservation, even to suffering, even to
guilt, even to everything that is questionable and strange in existence” (Ecce
Homo "The Birth of Tragedy"*2). Emily realizes that such a sense of self is
-
Yes saying to all that she experiences within herself. Her power will be the
“graciousness" to accept all her drives (Zarathustra. "On Those Who Are
Sublime). Grace is not attained by sating the drives, but by creating a
constellation of them emerging in a unique character.
Phase Two: Affirming the Dionysian Life

Toward Totality of Sol/ —Emily strives to become an exemplar for her

culture, not by epitomizing its values, but by rising above them and
legislating values for herself. She thus expresses her will to power by
stamping on her process of becoming a type of character. Nietzsche refers to
this new type as Ubermensch, the person who overcomes the conventional
within herself. He characterizes the Ubermensch as an artistic sense of
wholeness. Nietzsche exclaims:

To give style to one's character —a great and rare art! He

exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength
and weakness and then molds it to an artistic plan, until
everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses
delight the eye. (Reader *219)
16
This artistic style is not a metaphysical formulation to Nietzsche: “An
-
antimetaphysical viewof the world yes, hut an artistic one." (Will *1045) The
ideal individual must build a unity her various parts. Nietzsche describes
Goethe in such noble terms that if is not of the Ubermensch type, he
certainly approximates it:
“[H]e did not sever himself from life, he placed himself within
it; nothing could discourage him and he took as much as
possible upon himself, above himself, within himself . What he
aspired to was totality, he strove against the separation of
reason, sensuality, feeling, will...he disciplined himself as a
whole, he created himself..." (Reader. *236).
Emily learns that the particular virtues she cultivates are not as important as
how they are given expression in her life. Their expression is a creative act
bringing together the beautiful and ugly into an artistic whole.
The eternalreturn of the self —Even while an individual wills her own
creation of her character, she cannot escape fate. Deleuze (1963, PP- 25-27)
uses Nietzsche's dice game metaphors to interpret the will to power of fate.
The throw of the dice represents the chance of some combination of numbers
occurring, and thus the opportunity that a condition not previously present
will come into being. Chance represents the multiplicity of events in the
world, the multiplicity of a chaotic world. The particular combination of
numbers on the faces of the dice, however, defy the multiple possibilities by
combining in a certain way. Thus, the combination represents the necessity
of the combination to create itself, or the destiny of the dice throw. The
eternal return is Nietzsche's hammer against the dichotomy of becoming and
being: "The everythingrecurs is the closest approximation of a world of
becoming to a world of being' (Will to Power. ^617). Emily sees herself as a
roll of dice, not with despair, but as an assertion of her will to power.

Dionysianlove of fate —To deny her fate is to deny her life, which is to
cramp her self expression. Nietzsche exclaims:
My formula for greatness in a human toeing is amorfatl: that
one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward
not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less
•

conceal it— all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is

necessary-but love it. (Ecce Homo. "Why I Am So Clever,"

*10)
To love the eternal return requires the spirit of Dionysius. The Dionysian
spirit embraces the Mietzschean chaos in its beauty and ugliness, and seeks
nothing higher than it:
[A] monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm,
iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller,
17
that does note expend itself but only transforms itself ...This, my
Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally
self -destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous
delight, my 'beyond good and evil without goal, unless the joy
1

of the circle is itself a goal..." (Will to Power. *1067)

With a Dionysian spirit, Emily loves her destiny, and thus affirms a style in
her life, a life that has no direction other than to feel its power. Perhaps
Emily can identify with Dionysius, who is created from multiplicity and who
is thus the "master of the eternal return" (1953, p. 30).
Dionysian sense of the tragic. The mood necessary for affirming the
eternal return is generated fey injecting life with a superabundance of joy,
joy of asserting one's power.. But this is a tragic stance, in the sense for
which Nietzsche became renown in his interpretation of tragedy in ancient
Greece. In his posthumously published papers he declares: "Only Dionysian
joy is sufficient: }have toon the first to discover the tragic", a reference to
his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (Will to Power. *1029) At the end of
Nietzsche’s last work, his autobiographical Scce Homo he asks: "Have I been
,

understood? --Dionysius versus the Crucified.— Thus encapsulates

''

Nietzsche's argument with Western Civilization and the centrality of the

tragic. The Crucified represents Christianity's promise of a hereafter: one
suffers the existence of this world for the next. This world of becoming is
denied because it exacts suffering by virtue of its traasitoriness. Nietzsche
through Dionysius attaches a different meaning to transitoriness:
The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is
sufficiently strong, rich and capable of deifying to do so...The
god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption
from life; Dionysius cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be
eternally reborn and return again from destruction." (Will to
Power turn's
This severe characterization of Christianity, warranted or unwarranted, is a
part of his larger project against any sort of idealism which may favor being
over becoming. Perhaps a superabundance of energy is necessary to flood
out the mood of pessimism stemming from the agonies (in the original sense
Of "agon") of life. The tragic philosophy affirms life even while it affirms the
inevitable suffering and destruction that is a part of life: “...the orgy as an
overflowing feeling of life and energy within which even pain acts as a
stimulus..." (Twilight of the Idols. “¥/hat I Owe the Ancients,"*5) Emily
might learn from this that through the ranking of her drives into a power
constellation of character, she will overflow with the sensation of power and
entertain the tragic view of Dionysius.
ia
Urga toward unity with tha atoms!ratum-ln. a world of dice throws,
the will topower is the recurrence of an event. This implies a merging of
events, such merging Nietzsche refers to as love. In the "Drunken Song" in
Did you ever say Yes to one joy? 0 my friends, then you said
Yes to all woe as well. All tilings are chained and entwined
together, all things are in lov§ ...For all joy wants--atarnity"

(Reader.*2 ^4)
While the individual may have a sense of self, this self may only be a
hesitation in the eternal flux:
If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only
-
ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self sufficient, neither
in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with
happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity

was needed to produce this one event — and in this single

moment of affirmation all eternity ms called good, redeemed,
justified and affirmed. (Will*itra).
6. Conclusion

A summary. — What has Emily learned about the journey from

-
conventional person to the self overcoming person? Nietzsche's personal
philosophical agon is to make assertions without relying on any metaphysical
ground, and at the same time without accepting a nihilistic view of the
world. The only presupposition admitted is the untenability of any ultimate
presupposition, in another words, the world is inarticulate and chaotic. An
individual can arrive at such a conclusion by traversing through the three
changes in spirit. The camel spirit labors to acquire the burden of the
culture, seasoning herself for even greater struggles. .The lion spirit pursues
all values to their core presuppositions finding no ultimate meaning in the
- -
thing in itself, in the self, and in God. Radical nihilism characterizes this
total denial of ultimate meaning. . The child spirit makes a new beginning
possible, one leading to the Dionysian spirit.
Emily is now prepared to identify with the spirit of Dionysius, affirm
the will to power in herself as well as in life. She learns that we impress on
the flow of becoming concepts (our own becoming) in order to humanize the
world. Thus, anything that lives wants to feel its strength. To foe against
power, then, is to be against life. The foundations of conventional morality is
-
against self affirmation and affirmation of power in life, hence it is against
life. Emily must begin anew by learning how to affirm the power in her own
life. This is accomplished by learning to obey the commands of herself, a
paradoxical formulation that is resolved somewhat by Nietzsche's notion of
19
vying wills each struggling for dominance within the self . Emily has learned
that to master herself she needs to sublimate her drives by submerging
them into a single virtue. This entails graciously accepting them, no matter
how monstrous, so as not cause further repression and in fact to undo
repressed drives, no matter how ugly.
While self-overcoming is an end in itself, for one's will to power
cannot be greater than when it is used to enhance itself, a new evolution of
character is obtained. An individual can bring a style to her character which
unifies the warring elements of her soul. She also is in step with the great
surges of life, finding joy in its eternal return. She can feel a part of the
world since she loves her fate as the fate of the world. She affirms in herself
and in life the tragic sense of the Dionysian spirit, which is beyond good and
evil, affirming both ugliness and beauty, and disintegration and integration.
She loves her fate, feeling in her will to power the will to power of eternity
expressed in the eternal return of the same life. She does not pursue a
particular virtues or a set of traits, for higher type of person is a creative
expression, a style of becoming, rather than an epitome of her culture. As
such she stands above her culture, and although she stands out as self -
iegislated and self-contained, she is sobered by the thought that such
singularity will serve as an exemplar for her culture.
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