Recovering the Liberal Spirit

Nietzsche, Individuality, and Spiritual Freedom

Steven F. Pittz

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781438479798
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Liberalism is often castigated for being spiritually empty and unable to provide meaning for individuals. Is it true that there simply is no spiritual side to liberalism? In Recovering the Liberal Spirit, Steven F. Pittz develops a novel conception of spiritual freedom. Drawing from Nietzsche and his figure of the "free spirit, " as well as from thinkers as varied as Mill, Emerson, Goethe, Hesse, C. S. Lewis, and Tocqueville, Pittz examines a tradition of individual freedom best described as spiritual. Spiritual freedom is an often overlooked category of liberal freedom, and it provides a path to meaning without a return to communal or traditional life. While carefully considering Progressive and Communitarian counterarguments Pittz argues for both the possibility and the desirability of a free-spirited life. Citizens who are "free spirits" deliver great benefits to liberal democracies, primarily by combatting dogmatism and fanaticism and the putative authority of public opinion.

Chapter 1

The Free Spirit

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

—Bertrand Russell

In the following two chapters, I will explore the idea of the free spirit, borrowing heavily from Nietzsche’s description of this human type. I will be interested in the free spirit not as a component of Nietzsche’s character nor as a “hat” he sometimes wears, as a side of himself, but rather as a human type. The free spirit is presented as an ideal type; as Christine Daigle argues, the free spirit is “a viable ethical idea.”1 Not all Nietzsche scholars see the free spirit as such an ideal, and I will address these views later on. Up front, however, I argue that the free spirit is a viable ethical type and suggest that among individuals we may observe varying degrees of spiritual freedom. We may expect to find the traits and proclivities of the free spirit in various individuals to various extents. Likewise, we may expect to find the spiritual freedom of an individual to vary, to be more or less evident, at given times.

Free spirits must meet certain criteria, and there may be a fairly diverse spectrum of people that meet these criteria. Nietzsche offers one portrayal of the free spirit, and from this portrait we will gather the basic characteristics. But we will also extend past Nietzsche’s description at times, and we will be more inclusive in our definition of a free spirit than what we see in Nietzsche. I argue that, once we have determined the salient characteristics of spiritual freedom, the number of eligible individuals becomes substantial. Because there are degrees of spiritual freedom—degrees to which an individual may embody the salient characteristics—we can find free spirits in a greater quantity in society. Nietzsche himself insisted that the free spirit is a “relative concept,”2 that is, that rather than embodying an absolute sense of spiritual freedom, free spirits are more or less free than others, and the degree of freedom depends on many factors. Nietzsche also portrays the free spirit as rare and elite, however, and I will not precisely follow him in this regard. Instead, I will attempt to describe a free spirit by looking at certain traits, virtues, and orientations that exist in all of them. Therefore, exploring these traits, virtues, and orientations—that is, exploring the free spirit as a human type—will be the focus of this chapter. Once the mold of the free spirit becomes clear it will be possible to see which persons might fit into it.

A few other remarks about both my use of Nietzsche’s free spirit and the differences between his free spirit and the one conceptualized here are in order. Concerning my use of Nietzsche: many readers will hesitate at a discussion involving both Nietzsche and liberal political order. Nietzsche was a vociferous critic of liberalism, and his criticisms included the notion that liberalism weakens the spirit and produces citizens with a herd-like mentality. I do not attempt to challenge this reading of Nietzsche, nor do I attempt to make Nietzsche safe for liberal democracy. Further, it is readily apparent that the free spirit ideal is not obviously compatible with some of Nietzsche’s later writings (the free spirit belongs to what scholars have coined Nietzsche’s “middle period”).3 This, however, hardly negates the value of the ideal. I am interested in a model of spiritual freedom, and my debt to Nietzsche is for his provision of one in his rich description of the free spirit. As other scholars, such as Amy Mullin, have contended, the ideal of the free spirit is of interest to anyone who share’s Nietzsche’s “enthusiasm for the ability to explore multiple ways of interpreting human behavior and norms.”4 Recent years have also seen an increase in scholarship on the free spirit, with a 2015 volume devoted to “Nietzsche’s free spirit philosophy.”5 In other words, many scholars have begun to approach the free spirit as an ideal type that is worthy of study for its own sake. But while recent scholarship has produced a deeper understanding of spiritual freedom, it has not directly raised the question of how it relates to political life, or how we, as contemporary liberal citizens, might benefit from such understanding. That is my aim here, and I do not purport to be uncovering Nietzsche’s political project, but merely examining the free spirit and applying that ideal to the liberal political world. I will address this further in the discussion of politics in chapter 3.

In addition, it is necessary to distinguish between Nietzsche’s free spirit and the broader conception of free spirit that I develop. While the two conceptions are largely compatible, there are two major differences: First, for Nietzsche it seems that free spirits are rare and exceptional, part of an elite group separated from the mass of society. For Nietzsche, such spiritual freedom is out of reach for most of humanity. Second, Nietzsche’s free spirit does not allow for spiritual seeking in the way our more capacious conception does. Our free spirit leaves open the possibility of spiritual seeking—in a limited, liberal way—while Nietzsche’s free spirit seems to nearly foreclose some forms of spiritual seeking. Spiritual seekers,6 as it were, are often seeking some sort of metaphysical comfort. Nietzsche’s free spirit, to the contrary, must take leave of all metaphysical comforts—of “metaphysical need,” as he puts it—and the strength of their spirits depends on the degree to which they can do this. This point will be drawn out in detail later on. Our broader conception of spiritual freedom leaves some room for spiritual seeking and metaphysical attachments. Certain requirements limiting such seeking will emerge out of our discussion, but it is important for us to be cognizant of these differences before exploring the free spirit.

The best way to introduce ourselves to the free spirit is through Nietzsche’s description. The free spirit is prefigured in section 34 of Human, All Too Human. It will be helpful to provide some context for his emergence. Section 34 follows three others that ask whether humans can face the truth about what is essential to our acceptance of life. These sections are about (1) what is illogical, (2) what is unjust, and (3) the errors we have regarding life.7 Nietzsche wonders whether humankind, coming face to face with these truths, may in fact turn its back on life; would “death not be preferable?”8 Nietzsche’s first claim is that much of what is good in life is or proceeds from what is illogical. Secondly, as illogical beings we are also bound to be unjust, as we have no “fixed standard to be able justly to assess the relation between ourselves and anything else whatever.”9 Finally, Nietzsche contends that if man allows himself to see truly humankind as it is, “if in all he does he has before him the ultimate goallessness of man, his actions acquire in his own eyes the character of useless squandering,” and he will be led to despair.10 Our “error” is refusing to acknowledge the “goallessness of man,” preferring instead to believe in metaphysical illusions or human “progress.”

After showing us what he believes is a clear-sighted view of life and existence, Nietzsche proceeds to imagine a person who could face all of these truths—that is, resist the temptation to lie to himself about the nature of man or the value and meaning of human actions—and still contentedly accept life as it is. This person is a free spirit, and Nietzsche emphasizes that, above all, a free spirit’s positive reaction to the reality of existence is due to the person’s temperament. For Nietzsche, temperament means something closer to disposition, a distinction that I will clarify later. For now, let us quote Nietzsche at length, for this initial image of the free spirit will guide my further discussion of this human type. When confronted with the true knowledge of reality, reality free of illogic and error, Nietzsche asks:

Is it true, is all that remains a mode of thought whose outcome on a personal level is despair and on a theoretical level a philosophy of destruction? I believe that the nature of the after-effect of knowledge is determined by a man’s temperament: in addition to the after-effect described I could just as easily imagine a different one, quite possible in individual instances, by virtue of which a life could arise much simpler and emotionally cleaner than our present life is: so that, though the old motives of violent desire produced by inherited habit would still possess their strength, they would gradually grow weaker under the influence of purifying knowledge. In the end one would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praising, blaming, contending, gazing contentedly, as though at a spectacle, upon many things for which formerly one felt only fear. One would be free of emphasis, and no longer prodded by the idea that one is only nature or more than nature. For this to happen one would, to be sure, have to possess the requisite temperament, as has already been said: a firm, mild and at bottom cheerful soul. … A man from whom the ordinary fetters of life have fallen to such an extent that he continues to live only so as to know better must, rather, without envy or vexation be able to forgo much, indeed almost everything upon which other men place value; that free, fearless hovering over men, customs, laws and the traditional evaluations of things must suffice him as the condition he considers most desirable.11

There is much to analyze in this section, and some unpacking is required. It is helpful to break the section into parts by asking three questions: (1) How is this free spirit able to face the “terrible truths” that what is good in life comes from illogic, injustice, and error? (2) In the absence of belief in any of these “untruths,” how is the free spirit to evade despair and find a way to value and affirm life? How does the free spirit achieve spiritual fullness? (3) What does this section intimate about the free spirit’s relationship to the traditions of his historical and political community? Of these three questions I will be focusing on 1 and 2 in this chapter. Question 3 will be more appropriately answered in the next chapter.

In attempting to answer the first question, let us begin by delving further into Nietzsche’s “terrible truths” about human existence. In the section “Why I Am a Destiny,” in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that the truth is terrible. We must bear in mind Nietzsche’s epistemological standpoint when we approach the term “truth” here.12 Nietzsche did not believe in metaphysical, unitary, universal truth; he does not believe in truth with a capital “T.” When he speaks of “terrible truth,” he is therefore employing a more casual definition of truth, yet also with an implication that if one wants to see the reality of existence and human life as clearly as possible, one is going to come to some terrible and difficult conclusions. What might these conclusions be, exactly? Brian Leiter provides a helpful map for this question, dividing Nietzschean “terrible truths” into three basic categories. According to Leiter, there are three kinds of “terrible” truths: existential, moral, and epistemic.13 These truths align quite well with Nietzsche’s claim, while introducing the free spirit, that much in life comes from “illogic, injustice, and error.”

Let us address each in turn, starting with the terrible existential truths. For Nietzsche, it is the fear of accepting the existential truths that leads us to prefer “error.” Especially in his youth, Nietzsche was heavily influenced by the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, and the existential truths enumerated here borrow much from him. First, Leiter states that it is a terrible fact of life that we will all die. The notion of the immortal soul is an illusion, the existential truth being that we will literally vanish from the world, “our sentience and sapience will be extinguished for eternity.”14 A second existential truth is that we are all vulnerable to suffering throughout our lives, and are sure to be close to others—family members, friends, coworkers—who suffer as well, perhaps greatly. Worse yet, much of this suffering does not appear to us to have any clear cause, reason, or purpose.15 Finally, we are all stuck in a state of constant desire, or in Schopenhauerian terms, we are imprisoned by our will. We cannot will what we want and always receive it, according to Schopenhauer, but we must will. We have no choice about what desires we have; they are imposed upon us, and we can’t help but will them. What this means, as Leiter points out, is that “we are cursed, as it were, to reenact this pointless routine of striving and disappointment again and again for as long as we remain sentient, constituting the final perverse pointlessness of our existence in Schopenhauer’s view.”16

Now we must ask, how does the free spirit face these truths? The defining, and redeeming, characteristic of the free spirit is his capacity for affirming life in the face of these truths. The “terrible” existential truth is overcome by the free spirit’s temperament. Temperament was long a subject of import for Nietzsche, dating back to his notes in 1861, when he was seventeen years old. His recognition of temperament as a crucial factor in human behavior and an individual’s interpretation of events seems to have been stimulated when he was introduced to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nietzsche poses the matter rhetorically: “What determines our happiness in life? Do we have to thank events whose whirlpool carries us away? Or is it not our temperament, as it were, the coloration of events? Do we not encounter everything in the mirror of our personality? And do not events provide, as it were, only the key of our history while the strength or weakness with which it affects us depends merely on our temperament? Ask gifted doctors, Emerson says, how much temperament decides.”17 We will return to the subject of temperament later on, but we may note now that temperament was crucial for Nietzsche’s analysis of the self and of human behavior generally, and his interest in it is observable from his earliest writings to the end.

For those with the proper temperament, mortality is a cause for passion and enthusiasm rather than depression and despair. The brevity of life renders it more precious, thrilling, and intense than it would be if one’s life were eternal. This is a clear case where “the nature of the after-effect of knowledge is determined by a man’s temperament”—that is, how a man reacts to the knowledge of his own mortality depends on what kind of man he is, and a free spirit does not find mortality to be a cause for despair. Nietzsche ultimately came to reject strongly Schopenhauer’s condemnation of existence. He came to the view that Schopenhauer was successful in presenting an accurate description of the world, but he also went a step further by judging the world. To describe accurately is one thing, to pass judgment is another, and one need not condemn existence when faced with these existential truths.

Helpful here is Nietzsche’s idea of “Dionysian” pessimism, the insistence that pessimism need not lead to despair.18 Joshua Foa Dienstag explains Nietzsche’s view ac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Free Spirit
• 2. A Safe Distance from Politics
• 3. Free Spirits in Action: Practicing Political Detachment
• 4. Free Spirits in Liberal Political Society
• 5. The Possibility of Autonomy: The Progressive Critique
• 6. The Desirability of Autonomy: The Communitarian Critique
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover