Title: Nietzsche on Fatalism and "Free Will"
Abstract: ����� �� ietzsche is often classified and taught along with the “Existentialists,” mainly because he is (like Kierkegaard) so adamantly an “individual” and an early advocate of “self-making.” But Nietzsche also subscribes to a number of harsh doctrines that might be described as “fatalism” and a kind of “biological determinism,” to name but two. Fatalism, strictly understood, means that nothing could be other than it is, and Nietzsche’s sharp sarcastic comments about “the improvers of mankind” make it quite clear that he does not think that people can change their (collective) nature. Moreover, his persistent emphasis on “instincts,” “drives,” and “physiology” suggests a form of determinism based on our biology. Each of us individually has a particular “nature” that (whether actualized or not) cannot be altered. Like such existentialists as Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche is a powerful defender of what one might call “the existential self,” the individual who “makes himself” by exploring and disciplining his particular talents and distinguishes himself from “the herd” and the conformist influences of other people. But Nietzsche also attacks the very concept of freedom and with it the existentialist idea that we are free and responsible to make of ourselves what we will. Furthermore, Nietzsche celebrates precisely those ancient concepts of “fate” and “destiny” that Sartre, in particular, rejects as exemplary of “bad faith.” The question then becomes whether Nietzsche’s many comments and occasional arguments in favor of “the love of fate” (amor fati) and against “free will” undermine any interpretation of his philosophy in existentialist and “self-making” terms. I have argued elsewhere 1 that they do not and that Nietzsche might quite properly be included among the existentialists. What I want to do here is to argue in some detail that Nietzsche’s fatalism and Nietzsche’s “self-making” are ultimately two sides of the same coin and not at odds or contradictory. To what extent does Nietzsche embrace and to what extent does he dispense with notions of responsibility and, in particular, the responsibility for one’s character and “who one is.” After all, “What does your conscience say?— You shall become the person you are” (Gay Science, 270).
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 15
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