Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
Nietzsche and Objectivism

Unit One: January 31 - February 20

Thomas Gramstad's Comment
on Jason Ticknor-Schwob's Essay
Master and Slave in
Friedrich Nietzsche's
Geneology of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 4:08 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: TG Commentary on Jason's review essay, part 1

[From: Thomas Gramstad ]

COMMENTARY ON JASON TICKNOR-SCHWOB'S ESSAY [Part 1]

I very much enjoyed Jason's review, and found little to disagree
with, so my commentary will take more the form of expansion and
further exploration of topics already touched upon by Jason, and
perhaps some new observations, rather than setting forth contrary
positions to his. First I'll discuss master and slave moralities
in this posting. Then, in a separate posting or part 2, I'll
discuss Nietzsche's methodology and what I think was his primary
goal to accomplish. In the process I will also address a couple
of the questions raised by Stephen Hicks. In my two-part
commentary I frequently compare Nietzsche's and Rand's views.
This is not an attempt to jump to part 4 of the seminar
prematurely; I'm simply making a choice about my intended
audience. I'm primarily trying to reach those who are well
familiar with Rand, but less familiar with Nietzsche. Thus, I'm
sometimes using Rand as a contrast object, and sometimes I'm
trying to identify deeper similarities or complementary ideas
behind superficial differences. Sometimes I also try to describe
Rand as Nietzsche might see her -- this too may help a Randian
audience to grasp more of Nietzsche. My agenda is that Nietzsche
and Rand have valuable insights to offer each other, and that in
this predominately Randian audience, Nietzsche is the one who
needs more "good press". I hope that also those with good
familiarity with Nietzsche will find my comments interesting or
useful.

PART 1: ON MASTER AND SLAVE MORALITIES

By Nietzsche's standard, the Objectivist ethics is a master
morality ("Rand as Nietzsche might see her"). Many things
indicate this, but one particularly good indicator is Rand's
concept of the impotence of evil. The impotence of evil is
precisely the dividing line and the essential distinction between
master and slave moralities. Moralities that claim the impotence
of evil are master moralities; moralities that claim "the
impotence of good" (good as derived from and secondary to evil)
are slave moralities.

It is equally important to realize and point out (as Jason did)
that master and slave moralities are not necessarily opposites in
each and every aspect, they can to some extent be mixed or learn
from each other. I submit that a modern master morality must
learn the following from slave morality (this is "Nietzsche seen
through Rand"): "the principle of equal opportunity" -- I don't
know a better name for it off hand, but what I'm referring to is
the idea that "everyone can be a master". That is, a modern
master morality must advocate a politics that aims for the
extension of aristocracy or aristocratic virtues to everyone --
and not only to the members of some elite class.

Nietzsche may have been held back from a full-fledged or "pure"
individualism (I discuss his individualism in part 2) by his "Will
to Power" idea, and by his emphasis on aristocrat-feudalist
obsessions about relative rank, knowing one's place in hierarchies
of domination. Using Rand to focus on this, one can see that a
true master is (and is only concerned about being) the master of
himself (or herself), and is unconcerned about and has no interest
in being the master over or the dominator of other people. While
I agree with Rand that this is a "third alternative" in ethics (as
opposed to the two variants of sacrificial morality: sacrificing
oneself, and sacrificing others to oneself), I think it is also
important, in order to understand Nietzsche, to see that -- and
why -- Nietzsche would have been justified in labelling the
Objectivist ethics a master morality. For Nietzsche, the
impotence of evil is the essential characteristic of a master
morality; sacrifice of others to self is a derivative and
peripheral or accidental issue. In Nietzsche's life time there
existed no master morality that didn't advocate or accept
sacrifice -- the two things are, or were, historically associated,
and in addition to that Nietzsche also tied them together with his
mistaken "Will to Power" idea. But where would Nietzsche, or a
modern Nietzschean be, when the "Will to Power" is abandoned or
reinterpreted, and the historical association of master morality
and acceptance/advocacy of sacrifice has been broken by the
emergence of a new and non-sacrificial master morality? Well,
then we might know the answer to Nietzsche's question about what
the master morality of the future might be like!

"Masterhood" must become absolute and self-contained, fully
anchored in the individual self (this was Nietzsche's aspiration
at his best; see my Free Spirit discussion in part 2 of this
commentary); as opposed to being relative, externally defined by
rank. Being defined by a relative position to other people is to
be defined by other people. A master in the sense or type defined
by a master-slave relationship may as easily be seen as defined by
the slave as the slave is defined by him. This is the strange
dialectics of master-slave relationships, captured so well in
Rand's phrase from The Fountainhead, "a leash is only a rope with
a noose at both ends", and discussed extensively in Chris
Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. The goal then, is a
synthesis of aristocratic elitism with democratic personhood; this
would have to be the core of a new master morality, and a case can
be made that this is what Rand did.

Both "equal opportunity" and justice are ethical principles that
probably originated in a context of slave morality; they should
both be adopted and integrated by an enlightened and modern master
morality (as they have been, in the Objectivist ethics).
Nietzsche's particular form of social darwinist, "Will to Power"-
ideology making out biological existence as an endless battle for
dominance was challenged already in his own time; thinkers like
Kropotkin and Bakunin pointed out that cooperation and mutualism
is just as natural, biological and prevalent as competition. That
debate continues to this day in, e.g., evolutionary biology,
modern game theory (exploring the conditions of successful
tit-for-tat strategies etc.).

Thomas Gramstad

"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools,
and those who dare not are slaves."
-- George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), [Lord Byron]




*****************************************************
Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
cybersem@objectivistcenter.org

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*****************************************************


 

Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 8:11 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Free Spirit [TG Commentary on Jason's review essay, part 2]

[From: Thomas Gramstad ]

(This is part 2 of my commentary on Jason Ticknor-Schwob's essay)

PART 2: NIETZSCHE'S METHOD OF THOUGHT, AND HIS GOAL: THE FREE SPIRIT

Nietzsche is a systematic philosopher, he only hides it well.
He has a few key concepts that he applies to the whole domain of
existence, and they stand in specific (though dynamical)
relationships to each other. I think there are two things in
particular that lead to the (mistaken) perception that Nietzsche
is not a systematic philosopher:
(1) his process orientation
(2) his esthetical preferences for art, aphorisms, paradoxes,
poetry, play with language etc. rather than linear, logical
arguments, explanations and expositions.

For Nietzsche, temporal relationships are essential organizational
principles of his thought; therefore history becomes a crucial
discipline for him, not only because of its content, but as a
method of thinking, a way of understanding the why's of events and
trends. Where Rand starts with given entities, focusing on their
identity and their immutable characteristics, Nietzsche's concern
is their change, their drive for change, their evolutionary path.
Rand is existence, Nietzsche is becoming; Rand is identity,
Nietzsche is expansion. Rand primarily deals with systemic
relationships, Nietzsche primarily deals with dynamical
relationships; where Rand sees essential characteristics,
Nietzsche sees developmental stages. They both aim for and
achieve organic unity in their thought.

While Rand's starting point is existence (as opposed to
non-existence, death), Nietzsche's is the life force -- growth,
expansion, vitality (as opposed to being constricted, withering
away, decaying).

Is Nietzsche's concept of the "Will to Power" simply a synonym for
the life force, for natural vitality? Or is it the life force +
something else: an idea about an inherent need to dominate other
beings? Vitality or domination? At Nietzsche's best, it is the
first; but other times he seems to emphasize the latter.
Nietzsche's ambiguity on this point makes him and his philosophy
vulnerable to those who seek to use or abuse it to bolster their
own ideologies of domination. But Nietzsche must be evaluated
on his own merits, not on those who use or abuse him.

Nietzsche's ideas about the life force or vitality constitute
a (specific, though dynamical) view of human nature.
Can one choose one's nature? Existentialists say yes, but
Aristotle and Rand said no. When Nietzsche uses the metaphor of
birds of prey and lambs, he sides with Aristotle and Rand: one
cannot choose one's nature. But can one at least choose one's
actions? If interpreted literally and very narrowly, Nietzsche's
metaphor might be interpreted to say no, one cannot choose one's
actions -- but whenever did Nietzsche want to be taken literally?
The metaphor is a defense of having a nature, not of determinism.

The natural unfolding of a unique individual identity certainly is
one of the fundamental goals of Nietzsche -- perhaps THE one
major, primary goal of his writing -- but in order to see that,
one has to read what he writes about the Free Spirit (see, e.g.,
part 2 in _Beyond Good and Evil_, and everything about the three
stages -- Camel, Lion and Child, the latter especially, in _Thus
Spake Zarathustra_). Nietzsche's writings on the Free Spirit is
not on the syllabus of the cyberseminar, and I think that is
unfortunate, because it is one of Nietzsche's key concepts, and
the one that binds together his views on biology, psychology and
morality.

It is misleading to say that Nietzsche reduces morality to
psychology to biology, and therefore is a determinist and
reductionist. In order to say that, one would have to excise and
ignore the very core of Nietzsche's "identity" and ambition --
namely everything he ever wrote and said about the Free Spirit.
He simply treats them (morality, psychology and biology) as an
organic unity, different aspects of or perspectives on the same
complex and unique individual reality (the Free Spirit).

This is in keeping with modern biology, which teaches us that the
interesting issue is the _interactions_ of one's biology and
environment, and that it is meaningless to separate them (as in,
"this trait is 57 % genetical and 43 % environmental"). Biology
and environment (and the growing capacity for self-direction,
choice and morality) form a unity, a whole, and must be understood
as a whole, not as opposites. I also suggest that this is an
example of a dialectical strain in Nietzsche's thought
(dialectical in the sense identified by Chris Sciabarra:
"Dialectics is a methodological-research orientation whose
distinguishing characteristic is an emphasis on contextuality in
the analysis of systemic and dynamic relations within totalities
(i.e., organic unities)." This definition is available on Chris'
web site, in his books such as _Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical_,
_Total Freedom_ and in various articles and responses that Chris
has written and you can find with the search option on his web
site.).

Nietzsche is not a determinist, rather he tends toward what we may
call biological individualism. To understand this, consider the
following: when one talks about things that appear to express
biological determinism, usually the qualities that lend themselves
toward determinist interpretations, are not the biological aspects
of the matter, but external collectivist universalizations or
alleged generalizations transferred onto them ("all people... "all
women... "all blacks..." etc.). (For elaboration on this, see my
article, _Real Biology is Individualist, Not Collectivist_ at
http://www.math.uio.no/~thomas/po/real-biology.html .)

The point here is that those collectivist generalizations are
external to the individual's identity; outside the self.
Therefore they seem to constrict, override or negate the self,
setting up dualist opposites between one's individual nature and
one's species nature. But Nietzsche, like Rand, rejected such
dualism, and advocated an integrated view of human existence.
Nietzsche through life force, vitality and growth; Rand through
existence, identity and productivity. They are both philosophers
of, and advocates of, the creator -- the Free Spirit, the creative
mind, the one who produces, grows and puts a mark on the world.

It is his integrated view of human nature that makes it
implausible and unreasonable to accuse Nietzsche of being a
determinist. An individual is a unity of biology, culture,
environment, and a growing self, where the growing self is the
integrating and unifying factor. To allow oneself to develop and
unfold in accordance with one's nature is not the same as
determinism (or if it is, it is "determinism by engraved
invitation", if I may be allowed to paraphrase and recontextualize
Rand).
(I just had an idea that I think may be worth exploring: that
determinism -- as such, on principle, in all its variants -- is
predicated on dualism; that determinism logically presupposes a
divided self, a self consisting of warring factions. The concept
of determinism cannot apply to a self that is an integrated unity,
and therefore determinism cannot be a part of any philosophy
exploring or advocating such a view (such a _contextual_ or
_dialectical_ view) of an integrated self.)

Nietzsche doesn't fully succeed, in my opinion, in his agenda to
establish the nature and the conditions of the Free Spirit,
because his "Will to Power" idea is ill-formed by being mixed up
with, or at least insufficiently delimited from, acceptance or
advocacy of domination and sacrifice of others.

And this, finally, is the connection between the Free Spirit and
the master morality. Nietzsche's true master is the poet, and
most poets don't spend a lot of time dominating people. But they
also don't spend a lot of time defining and delimiting their
concepts. Nietzsche conceived the Free Spirit as an artist, one
who evokes and inspires, rather than one who works out a
philosophically complete and epistemologically valid description.
That's our job.

Thomas Gramstad
"Wherever you go, go with all your heart." -- Confucius


*****************************************************
Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
cybersem@objectivistcenter.org

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*****************************************************