The Forma tion of the Self. Nietz sche and Complex ity
Paul Cilliers,1 Tanya de Villiers and Vasti Roodt De part ment of Phi los o phy, Uni ver sity of Stellenbosch, Pri vate Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, South Af rica
Ab stract: The purpose of this arti cle is to exam ine the rela ti onship be tween the form a- tion of the self and the worldly hori zon within which this self achieves its meaning. Our inquiry takes place from two per spec tives: the first de rived from the Nietzschean analy sis of how one becom es what one is; the other from current devel op m ents in com plexit y theory. This two-angled approach opens up differ ent, yet relat ed dim ensions of a non-essentialist under sta nd - ing of the self that is nonethe les s nei ther arbi tra ry nor de ter minis ti c. Indeed, at the meet ing point of these two perspec tives on the self lies a concep ti on of a dynam ic, worldly self, whose identi ty is bound up with its appear ance in a world shared with others. Af ter exam ining this argu m ent from the respec tive view points offered by Nietzsche and com plexit y theory, the arti cle con- cludes with a con sid er ation of some of the po liti cal and eth ical impli ca tions of repre sent ing our situatedness within a shared hum an dom ain as a condi - tion for self-formation.
In tro duc tion A short apho rism from the second volum e of Human, All Too Human reads: “In sol i- tude the sol itar y man consum es him self, in the multi tude the many consum e him. Now choose” (Nietz sche HAH II, 348).2 So as to leave us in no doubt about what is in - volved in this choice, Nietz sche in scribes his maxim with the ti tle: “From the land of the canni bals ”. His point, one could argue, is precis ely that one can not choose. To em- bark on ei ther course – retre ating enti rely into sol itude or becom ing pas sively im - mersed in communality – is to lose one self. What is at stake here is this prob lematic rela ti onship be tween the self and the crowd, be tween soli tude and worldli ness. Nietz- sche is thus engaged with the general problem of the form ati on of the self. How does the self come to be so that we cannot deny its inde pend ent exis tenc e (and conse quentl y ac knowl edg ing it as a bearer of re spon si bil ity), yet re cog nise its in ev i ta ble so cial embeddedness? In this ar ticle we are in ter ested in the pos si bil ity that the think ing self - hood lies be tween the two extre mes of soli tude or soli psis m on the one hand, and unilinear so cial de ter mina tion on the other – not as their dia lec tical res o lu tion into a higher unity, but as a tightrope walk betwee n two kinds of dis solu ti on. 1 To whom corre spon dence should be address ed (e-mail:
In the so-called “post-modern” af ter math of Nietzsche’s decen tralisa tion of the metaphys ical sub ject, a non-essentialist un der stand ing of the self may seem fairly com monplac e. For those fa mil iar with the work of, among others, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and Lacan, it is easy – perhaps too easy – to talk about the decen tre d or frag- mented self. For those not fa miliar with these discour ses, as well as those who are crit - ical of them, such an under sta nding of the self is not self-evident. From their perspec - tive, the non-essentialist concep ti on of the self repre sent s the disso lu ti on of moral ity, or its de scent into rel a tiv ism.3 If the self is a slip pery af fair, it be comes dif fi cult to ac - count for moral agency and to as cribe moral respon si bil ity. It is worthwhil e, therefore, to develop a non-essentialist under sta nding for the self from a perspec tive that would be more ac cept able to those who are less in clined to ac cept ar gu ments with a post-modern flavour. Such an argu m ent can be made, we propose, from the perspec - tive of com plexit y theory. Com plexit y theory – not to be confused with chaos the ory or cyber net ics (see Cilliers 1998: viii–ix) – grew out of for mal, sci en tific at tempts to deal with a complex world. Al though there were initi al hopes that we would be able to develop theo rie s that would help us to come to grips with com plex phe nom ena in an objec ti ve way, the study of com plex system s has rather confronte d us with the lim its of sci enti fic knowl- edge (Cilliers 2000, 2001). As will be shown in more detai l later, this means that we can not avoid nor ma tive el e ments when deal ing with com plex ity. This ac knowl edge- ment of the lim its of objec ti ve knowl edge im plies that we can start with a rigor ous, sci enti fic form of anal ysis , and still ar rive at an under sta nding that is nei ther mechan i - cal nor final. What we are at tempting to show in this pa per is how argu m ents from com plexit y can be used to develop an under sta nding of the self that bears a marked affin it y with that of Nietzsche. At first glance, these two per spec tives may ap pear somewhat dis pa - rate. Both, however, are concerne d with the lim its of our under sta nding of the self. This entai ls that the form ati on of the self can never be a com pleted proces s. On the one hand, our aim is then to show how a refle cti on on Nietzsche ’s criti cal philos o phy dovetai ls with contem porary argu m ents on com plexit y in a way that casts new light on the re la tion ship be tween or der and mul ti plic ity, sol i tude and communality, self and world. On the other hand, we also hope to provide an argu m ent for an under sta nding of the self, sim ilar to that of Nietzsche , which does not depend on the accep tanc e of his philo soph i cal pro ject. By re lat ing Nietz sche’s think ing about the con sti tu tion of the self to par tic u lar in - sights derive d from com plexit y theory, we thus offer two argu m ents for devel op ing an under sta nding of self-formation as an event that is neither arbi tra ry nor de ter mined. Our ulti mate inten ti on is to dem onstra te that this way of thinking about the self does not oper ate sim ply on the level of indi vid ual psychol ogy or scien ti fic theory, but im - pacts on the way in which we concei ve of our re lati ons to others in the world. We pro- pose to estab li sh, in other words, the extent to which the questi on of who or what one is, is nec es sar ily also a ques tion of eth ical and po liti cal praxis. In the first sec tion of the arti cle we explore Nietzsche ’s under sta nding of self- formation – that is to say, the condi ti ons under which one moulds a self, perhaps even fabri cat es a self, and thus becom es what one is. This is sue is explore d in re lati on to 3 Con sider, for in stance, Alasdair MacIn tyre’s critique of non-essentialist mo rality as a su per fi cial emotivism that has taken root in the after math of the loss of a meaning ful, pre-En lighten m ent mo ral ity – mo rality “as it once was” (MacIn tyre 1992:22). S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 3
Nietzsche ’s portra yal of the inter-human hori zon within which this self achieves its meaning, and which he des ignate s as “the world”. This dom ain can be char ac ter ised as a “space of appear ance ” (a form ula ti on borrowed from Hannah Arendt), with the dual qual i ties of phenomenality: allow ing us to appear to others in a shared dom ain be yond the self, and provisionality: des ig nat ing the fra gil ity and con tin gency of the con di tion of our appear ance . In the sec ond part of the arti cle the perspec tive shifts to that of com plexit y theory. A brief intro duc ti on to this field argues that com plex system s can only be under stood in rela ti onal terms, and therefore cannot be given a com plete and fi nal de scripti on. The so cial system – “the world” or the “space of ap pear ance” – is com plex. The self co mes to be in in ter ac tion with this com plex ity, while si mul ta neously con trib ut ing to wards it. There is thus a tension be tween the self as consti tuted in the socia l system , and the sys tem as somethin g that is a re sult of the ac tion of selves. The third and fi nal sec tion ex am ines spe cific eth i cal-political im pli ca tions of this tension as it is theorise d in both sets of argu m ents. From their differ ent perspec tives, both Nietzschean and com plexit y theory under m ine the essentialist account of the self as well as so cial constructivist or de ter minis tic no tions of the self as a mere func tion or product of its envi ron m ent. This account of the com plex radical ises the tension be - tween, and thus the precar i ous ness of, both self and world; the unpre dict abil ity, insta - bil ity and provisionality of the “system ” at any one point. We aim to dem onstra te that this concep ti on of the self as somethi ng which is in perpet ual form ati on through inter - acti on with the world is poli ti cal through and through, and that it is bound up with an eth ics which is nei ther rel a tiv is tic nor ab so lut ist.
Nietzsche and the forma tion of the self Even the most glancing encoun ter with Nietzsche ’s writings will uncover an insis tence that the self is a fic tion, that the be lief in a unitary sub ject is a re sult of the grammat i - cal seduc ti on perpe tra ted by the cate gory of the first person singu lar . And yet, he is equally insis tent that we are able to give form to oursel ves, indeed, that we ought to do so. This appar ent contra dicti on – that one needs to be come a self and that this very self does not exist except as a fic tion or il lusion – is bound up with the consid er ati on of how one becom es who one is. To this end, it is worthwhil e to exam ine Nietzsche ’s portra yal of acti on as a mode of self-formation, and the rela ti on betwee n acti on, mem - ory and mem ory’s neces sary counter part: forget ful ness. This inquiry will serve in turn to clar ify Nietz sche’s un der stand ing of the in de ter minacy of all iden tity, as well as the nec es sary, yet am big u ous re la tion ship be tween self and world. Two il lu mi nat ing quo ta tions from Human, All Too Human provide a valuable start- ing-point for the above consid er ati ons: Ev ery one pos sesses in born tal ent, but few possess the de gree of inborn and ac - quired toughness, endur ance and energy actu all y to becom e a talent, that is to say to be come what he is: which means to discharge it in works and acti ons (HAH I, 263). Acti ve, suc cessful na tures act, not accord ing to the dictum “know thysel f”, but as if there hovered be fore them the com mandm ent: will a self and thou shalt be- come a self. – Fate seems to have left the choice still up to them; whereas the in ac tive and con tem pla tive cog i tate on what they have already chosen, on one occa sion, when they enter ed into life (ibid. II, 366). 4 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1)
Nietzsche is clearly suggest ing that identi ty involves a kind of praxis. One does not be come a self merely by vir tue of con cep tual ising a char acter, or by al low ing a given psy chic re ality to take ex ter nal form – that is to say, pre cisely not by virtue of the So - cratic “know thy self”. On the contra ry, what one is emerges from how one acts. In this sense, Nietzsche presents us with a performative ac count of identi ty, in terms of which the self is a dynam ic form ati on that depends on perfor m ance, in the same way as the dancer who cannot be sepa rat ed from the dance. Seen in this light, not to per form, to re frain from acti on, is not a kind of nega ti ve freedom , a nega ti on of all identi ty. Rather, it is the condi ti on under which one is forced to subm it to an identi ty that is im posed from without (cf. Villa 1992: 284). Nietz sche skil fully dem on strates this point in his ge ne a log i cal ex po si tion of mas ter and slave moral ity in The Ge ne al ogy of Morals, where he argues that the dis tincti on orig inates in a schism be tween two ex pe ri ences of agency. Mas ter moral ity emerges from an expe ri ence of an exces s of strength that knows how to vent itsel f in deeds, and re serves the ep ithet “bad” for those who lack the ca pac ity for ac tion. Slave mo ral ity emerges among those who are inca pa ble of discharg ing them selves in acti on, and who subli mate their secret self-disgust in a mode of evalu a ti on accord ing to which the ac- tive, com manding hum an being is evil, power is evil, self-affirmation is evil, and the lack of all of these ca pac ities, weak ness, the sus pen sion of the will is bap tised as “good” (GM II, 10).4 The form er mode of evalu a ti on origi nate s with those who act, who give form to them selves, while the second ary , deriv a ti ve, slavish moral code emerges with those who are acted upon. It is im portant , however, not to misun der sta nd Nietzsche on this point: he does not portra y self-formation as a purely ar bitra ry exhi bi ti on of acti vit y. In his ac count, the emergence of identi ty is predi cat ed on both the dy nam ics of perfor m ance and the con- stancy of mem ory, for it is only by re mem bering what one has done that it becom es pos sible to sus tain a self over time. Nietz sche de scribes this in terms of the ca pac ity to sus tain prom ises, which re quires “a real mem ory of the will: so that be tween the origi - nal “I will”, “I shall do this” and the ac tual dis charge of the will, its act, a world of strange new things, cir cum stances, even acts of will may be inter posed without break- ing this long chain of will” (GM II, 1). In this way, mem ory im poses a certai n amount of order, regu lar ity and predict abil ity – a kind of last ingness – upon the self that is condi ti oned by our acti ons. Yet the or igin of mem ory, for Nietz sche, does not lie with the self. Rather, it is a sta - bili sing force that arises within a hum an com munit y and therefore es tabli shes the self in re lati on to others. In the course of his analy sis of punish m ent in The Ge ne al ogy of Morals, Nietz sche ad vances the the sis that the need to re mem ber stems from an orig i- nal need to honour contra cts made, and that it is through the expe ri ence of corpo real punish m ent for failing to discharge our debts that we first acquire a mem ory (GM II, 1-3) . In this way, pain functi ons as the origi nal mnem onic de vice whereby we are moulded into beings capa ble of com mit ting oursel ves to the future , and punish m ent re- lates the self to the com munit y to whom the debt is owed. However, Nietzsche consid ers unbri dled mem ory to be as destruc tive of the self as unre m em bered acti on. Boundles s mem ory ties us to the past and preclude s the sense of imme di acy that is the con di tion of all ac tion. This point re calls the fa mous dic tum from The Gay Sci ence that “by doing we forego” (GS 304), meaning that every acti on 4 In the case of The Ge ne al ogy of Mor als, ref erences are to the es say number fol lowed by the para graph num ber. S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 5 irre deem ably changes the course of events and therefore engen ders the loss of other pos si bil i ties for ac tion or val u a tion. Un con strained mem ory would al ways re mind us of this loss, and thus under m ine the good consci ence require d to act at all. We need a measure of forget ful ness in order to perform the deeds by which we becom e who we are. This neces sary forget ti ng can be likened to drawing a hori zon around one self, a kind of unhistorical arm our, which shields us from doubt, and allows for the uncon - strained consci ence that is the condi ti on for acti on in the pres ent. Apart from its role in counter ing the pas sivit y that com es with an exces s of mem ory, forget ful ness also serves a further purpose as “a doorkeepe r, a pre server of the psychic order, re pose, and et i quette” (GM II, 1). The im pli cati on here is that any sense of self would be im possi - ble if we were to know, in an abso lut e sense, ev ery thing about one self. Certai n truths must be veiled if the perfor m ance is to conti nue. To summa rise these pre limi nar y in sights into Nietz sche’s por trayal of self- formation: one be comes a self by acting in the world; one re mains a self by virtue of mem ory, which binds one act to another , thus produc ing an endur ing charac ter over time, while the ca pac ity for ac tion, as well as the sense of iden tity that emerges from such acti on, are both protec ted by a certai n amount of forget ful ness. At this point, we are again confronte d with the earli er ques tion of how this parti cu lar concep ti on of self-formation re lates to Nietz sche’s con ten tion that the self is an il lu sion. An an swer here re quires a more detai led explo ra ti on of the worldly hori zon that circum scribes hu- man iden tity. In an unpub li shed note from 1872 Nietzsche writes: “We know what the world is: abso lut e and uncon di ti onal knowledge is the desire to know without knowl edge” (KSA VII.465; note 19 [146]).5 If what counts as the world for us is merely condi ti onal know - ledge, what is the source of this condi ti oning? We are, claims Nietzsche, or rather, our need for a world in which it is pos sible for us to live. This dom ain is the phenom enal world that ex ists for us, and which would disap pear in the course of any suc cessful at- tempt to do away with all appear ance , fic tion, and illu sion and to find the uncon di - tional ba sis of the world-in-itself. In a much later note, Nietz sche asks rhe tor ically: “Is not the world for us merely a com bina ti on of rela ti ons under a measure? As soon as this arbi tra ry measure is lacking, our world dis solves!” (KSA IX.454, note 11 [36]). This form ula ti on suggest s two im portant quali ti es pertai ning to the world that con - cerns us: a re la tional qual ity and the qual ity of ar bi trariness or provisionality. It is es - senti al first to exam ine these two attri butes in conjunc ti on with one another , before turning to the im pli cati ons of this concep ti on of the world for our under sta nding of the self. In the first place, the rela tional as pect of the world has bear ing on Nietz sche’s performative ac count of identi ty: ac tion calls up witnesse s, and thus brings the one who acts into a re la tion with oth ers.6 Stated differ entl y, to give form to a self require s an arena in which the perfor m ance can be played out, an inter-human hori zon of meaning in which this self acquire s signif i canc e and thus a form of endur ance . This 5 For unpub lished mate ria l from Nietzsche’ s notebooks, refer ences are to the vol ume and page num bers in the Kritische Studienausgabe of Nietzsche’ s collect ed works, followed by the note num ber. In these cases, the trans la tions are our own. 6 Nietz sche demon strates how the mean ing of an ac tion changes in rela tion to a spe cific in terpre ta tive com mu nity (which im pacts, in turn, on the way in which the rela tion ships betwee n the mem bers of such a com mu nity are con sti tuted) in his anal y ses of mon u men tal, an ti quar ian and crit i cal his tory in ‘The Uses and Dis ad van tages of His tory for Life’, 3). 6 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1) worldly dom ain can be under stood as a “space of appear ance ” (Arendt 1958: 199 ff.) in which we encoun ter one another , becom e vis ible to one another , both as perform ers and as specta tors of the per for mance. What we des ig nate as the world is precisely this field of ap pear ances and re lations that con di tions the belief in the self as a co her ent en - tity. In Nietzsche ’s ac count, this beli ef, and the condi ti ons from which it springs, are nec- essary require ments for hum an life. Never the les s, one should not confuse hum an ne- ces sity with truth. Nietz sche’s con cern is with the world in which it is pos si ble for us to live – the world of appear ance s, which circum scribes the condi ti ons under which we ap pear.7 The world in his sense is no thing in itsel f, but rather a nec essary error that emerges from a com bina ti on of hum an need and cre ativit y. In this re spect, the hum an being can be under stood as the measure of the world, but then only as an arbi tra ry measure. Our measure m ents or value-standards do not re fer to an origi nal real it y, but merely to our conti ngent posi ti on within – and thus our lim ited perspec tive on – the re- la tions that con sti tute the inter-human do main. At the same time, these po si tions and per spec tives emerge from the in ter play of these re lations themselves. In this sense, we both give form to and are formed by the world that lies betwee n us. Another note from the Nachlass descri bes this inter play betwee n the self and world – or the part and the whole – as fol lows: Ev ery cen ter of force adopts a per spec tive to ward the en tire re main der, i.e. its own parti cu lar valu a ti on, mode of ac tion, and mode of resis tance. The “appar - ent world”, therefore, is reduced to a spe cific mode of ac tion on the world, em - anat ing from a center. Now there is no other mode of ac tion what ever; and the “world” is only a word for the to tal ity of these ac tions. Re al ity con sists pre cisely in this par tic u lar ac - tion and reac ti on of every indi vid ual part toward the whole – (WP 567). Starting from this for mula tion, it is pos si ble to claim that what counts as the world for us is sus tained by the cease less, dy namic in ter play of forces that op er ate on one an - other by way of acti on and resis tance – or, in Nietzsche ’s terms: the will to power. In his ac count, we our selves are part of this force-field in so far as we in ter pret; that is to say, inso far as we mould the chaos of expe ri ence into a spe cific or der for the sake of main tain ing a par ticu lar form of life. In this re spect, each in ter preter is a cen tre of force, which ex er cises it self upon the to tal ity of in ter pre ta tions and eval u a tions that con sti tute the world.8 To inter pret, in this sense, is not to come to know somethi ng about the world as thing-in-itself, but rather “to schematize – to im pose upon chaos as much regu lar ity and form as our practi cal needs require ” (WP 515). In Nietz sche’s ac count, this sche ma ti za tion finds its most com pel ling ex pres sion in history – or the codi fi ca ti on of mem ory – and language. If, as discusse d in the previ - ous sec tion, mem ory allows identi ty to endure over time, then his tory relat es the mem - ory of the indi vid ual to that of the com munit y, and in this way create s a stable world in which one can be recog nise d as a self in disti ncti on from others. History and mem ory 7 “We have ar ranged for ourselve s a world in which we can live – by posit ing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these ar ticles of faith nobody would now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no ar gu ment. The con ditions of life might include error” (GS 121). 8 This is precise ly the point of the famed pronounce m ent that ‘[t]he world seen from within, the world de- scribed and defined ac cording to its ‘intel li gi ble charac ter ’ – it would be ‘will to power’ and noth ing else’ (BGE 36). S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 7 are moulded in turn by the concep tual cat ego rie s at our disposal which we share with one another . Yet while these shared linguis ti c cate go rie s may corre spond to our practi - cal needs, this is no proof of a re alit y that corre sponds to the concept s we have at our disposal . On the contra ry, Nietz sche claims that concept s only desig nate rela ti ons of things to oursel ves (TL p. 82), and that every concep tual scheme – be it an account of the past, of the com munit y or of the self – is therefore merely a conti ngent inter preta - tion of a com plex of forces and rela ti ons, not inti mati ons of a given truth. Moreover, if every such inter preta ti on takes place against the background of an endles s play of in - ter pre ta tions, no sin gle in ter pre ta tion can lay claim to fi nal va lid ity. In this sense, the world is in fi nite, “in as much as we can not re ject the pos si bil ity that it may in clude in fi - nite in ter pre ta tions” (GS 374). This insight relat es to the second charac ter isti c of the inter-human dom ain: its provi - sional charac ter . For Nietz sche, the ho rizon of meaning within which we give form to our selves is an in deter minate space, which retai ns its am bigu ity over and against all at- tempts to in scribe it with a fixed char ac ter. Clearly, to concei ve of the world in this way has im pli cati ons for our under sta nding of the self. In the first place, given that we are em bedded in the com plex of forces that sustai ns the dom ain of hum an life, it is senseles s to think the self over and against the world. Nietz sche consid ers this a laughable jux tapo si ti on, and goes so far as to de - scribe the inser ti on of “and” betwee n “hum an” and “world” as a “subli me presum p - tion” (GS 346). The self, in his sense, is worldly: who one is, is em bedded in the sum of tem po ral re la tions that con di tions one’s be com ing any thing at all. The second im pli cati on is that self-formation does not equal self-knowledge. For, whereas each indi vid ual may well be a unique com plex of drives or consti tuti on of forces, we can only ever “know” our selves by means of con cep tual sche mata we share with others, and that are therefore precis ely not unique, but aver age, com mon and gen- eral. Since we lack the appro pri ate “sensi ti ve organs” with which to grasp our inner world unm edi ate d by language – which belongs to the exter nal world – we cannot but “sense a thousandfold com plexit y as a unity” (WP 523). Stated dif fer ently: the self is construc ted by its mode of knowing, yet this knowing takes place in cate go rie s that are not of our own making, and therefore reaches no deeper than “a groping game on the backs of things” (TL p. 80).9 The last and most sig nif icant impli ca tion is that the Nietzschean self is not a unitary enti ty, but a plural ity. If the form one gives to one self is nothing more than a change- able inter preta ti on of the inter play of forces that consti tute the world, then every con- cepti on of the self bears traces of disso nance , of the un told perm uta ti ons of force that cannot be incor po rat ed into a fi nite ac count of a single life. Here we should also recal l the charac ter isa ti on of the self as an organi sa ti on of drives or forces, an inter preta ti on of the body, that is never the les s not a fixed or com plete mani fes ta ti on of its phys io log - ical source. In Nietzsche’s phras ing, the self is there fore always an imper fect tense that can never be come a per fect one; a sum with an awk ward frac tion left over (UDH 1). The im portant questi on in this re gard – im portant in a moral and poli ti cal sense – is how we deal with this sense of disunit y and incom pleteness. Broadly speaking, Nietz - 9 Consider also: ‘I maintain the phenomenality of the inner world, too: every thing of which we be come conscious is arrange d, schematized, inter preted through and though – the actual pro cess of inner ‘per- cep tion’, the causal con nec tion between thoughts, feel ings, desires, be tween sub ject and ob ject, are ab - solutel y hidden from us – and are per haps purely imagi nary . The ‘appar ent in ner world’ is governe d by just the same forms and proce dures as the ‘outer’ world’ (WP 477). 8 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1) sche iden tifies three pos si ble strat e gies of re sponse. The first strat egy is simply the forceful de nial or suppres sion of all disso nance in fa vour of beli ef in the uni tary self, which include s holding fast to an abso lut e dis tincti on betwee n self and world. A sec - ond opti on is to surren der to the ceaseles s movem ent of the chaoti c and dispa rat e forces that rend asunder all identi ty. Both of these be long in the land of the canni bals , for they both destroy the worldly condi ti ons under which we are able to give form to oursel ves – albeit in differ ent ways. The uni tary concep ti on of the self seeks its mean- ing in a fixed point that neces sar il y lies outside the changeable hum an world, thereby sever ing its adher ents from the inter-human dom ain and casting them back upon them - selves, while the thought less surren der to a cha otic array of val ues, be liefs and prac- tices re sults in a kind of un limited in ter nal war fare that con sumes all co her ent iden tity. In con trast to these two self-destructive at tempts at dealing with the dis unity and contra dicti on that springs from our embeddedness in the world as will to power, Nietz - sche ad vo cates an al ter na tive strat egy which he des ig nates as “the art of di vid ing with - out mak ing in im i cal; mix ing up noth ing, “rec on cil ing” noth ing; a tre men dous mul ti- plicit y which is nonethe les s the oppo sit e of chaos” (EH: “Why I am so clever”, 9). To give form to a self in this sense is neither to sus pend the play of disso nance in fa vour of a static unity, nor to surren der to the pull of a chaoti c array of forces, but to act un - der the constra int of style. Whatever identi ty is formed in this fashion would encom - pass the tension be tween constra int, order, rhythm and the exces s of possi bil iti es for acti on arising from the amorphous force-field that is the will to power. Nietz sche des- ignate s this performative identi ty as “dancing in chains” (WS 140), com prising both flu id ity and self-control, dynamis and restra int. Such a perfor m ance would sus tain the pro por tional re la tion be tween ac tion, mem ory and for get ful ness, and in this way would consti tute the master ly art whereby “one neither goes wrong nor hesi tat es in the per for mance” (GS 537).10 Against this background, it is pos sible to make sense of Nietzsche ’s dual em phasis on the need for self-formation and the il lusory na ture of the self. His point is that, while the self may be a conti ngent struc ture, a changeable organi sa ti on of forces, the mode of or gani sa tion mat ters – and, as we shall see, matters eth i cally. Be fore at tempt - ing an expo si ti on of this point, however, it is im portant to first exam ine the argu m ent about the form ati on of the self that can be made from the perspec tive of com plexit y theory. The fol lowing secti on intro duces an under sta nding of the self as a com plex sys tem which shows a dem onstra ble affin it y with the insight s offered by Nietzsche , before the fi nal secti on draws togethe r the most im portant threads running through both descri pti ons in a consid er ati on of the ethi cal -political dim ensions of the self.
10 It is im portant to note that, for Nietzsche, the style of indi vid ual self-form ation is condi tioned by the cul - tural complex from which it emerges. For presicely this rea son, a Caesar, a Goe the, a Na po leon – some of Nietzsche’ s exam ples of hum an beings in the “grand style” – are no longer possi ble today: the cul - tural constel lations that made them possi ble no longer exist. For Nietz sche’s under stand ing of culture as the groundwork of indi vid ual exis tence , see Van Tongeren (2000). S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 9
Comple xity the ory and the self Before turning to a dis cussion of the self from a com plexit y per spec tive, it may be use- ful to intro duce some of the basic princi ples of com plexit y theory. 11 Com plex ity the - ory studies sys tems. Where clas sical physics would approach a com plex system in a reductionist fashion, 12 complex ity theory takes, as far as pos sible, the re lational char - acter of the consti tu ents of com plex system s into account. One cannot ana lyse all the parts that make up a sys tem sep arately in the hope that this will cap ture the es sence of the sys tem. Be cause the char acter istics of the sys tem are es tab lished in the rela tion - ships between the com po nents, we de stroy such char acter istics (of ten called emergent prop er ties) when we “cut up” the sys tem. Since emergent prop er ties are the re sult of the inter acti ons in the system , they cannot be predict ed merely by an exam ina ti on of the sep arate compo nents of the sys tem. What is more, since the in ter actions are non-linear (Cilliers 1998: 4, 120), we cannot re place a specif ic set of inter acti ons with another , sim pler set of inter acti ons. Com plexit y is incom press ible (7–10). This is an- other way of say ing that a com plex system cannot be broken up into its consti tu ent parts, nor can it be re placed by a simpler sys tem, with out los ing vi tal char ac ter is tics of the system . Since all descri pti ons (or models ) of com plex system s must re duce the com plexit y in order to be intel li gible, we can conclude that form al, a priori models of com plex system s (like the self) can never be fi nal or com plete (Cilliers 2001). When exam ining a com plex system we have to conside r not only the set of re lati on - ships which consti tutes the system , but also the envi ron m ent in which the system has to func tion.13 The in tri cate in ter ac tion be tween the sys tem and its en vi ron ment means that it is of ten dif fi cult to de ter mine the bor ders of the sys tem. A com plex sys tem is thus not merely a passive refle cti on of its envi ron m ent, nor is it in control of the envi - ron ment. The re la tion ship be tween the two in volves a di a lec tic that is nei ther ac tive nor passive .14 The envi ron m ent is usuall y com plex in it self, and in order to cope, a com plex system needs to be able to do two things: it needs to be able to store infor m a- tion about its envi ron m ent (mem ory), and it needs to be able to adapt its structure to changes around it. Specif ic adap ta ti ons to a changing envi ron m ent cannot be program med into the sys- tem, nor can the system act accord ing to inher ent or a priori princi ples which do not take the exter nal world into ac count. In order to deal with conti ngen cie s, the sys tem has to be able to or ganise it self. This self-organisation relationally incor po rat es the his - tory of the sys tem (mem ory) and ele m ents exter nal to it (Cilliers 1998: 89–111). 11 Some aspects of com plexity theory may have devel oped out of chaos theory , but com plexity is most cer- tainly not reduc ible to (deter minis tic) chaos. The way in which Nietz sche uses the notion “chaos” has abso lutel y nothing to do with chaos theory . A de tailed descri ption of com plexity from a philosoph i cal perspec tive is provided in Cilliers (1998). Other sources with intro duc tions to com plexity and discus - sions of its im plica tions in vari ous contexts include Juarrero (1999), Prigogine and Stenger (1984), Kaufmann (1995), Lewin (1993) and Khalil and Boulding (1996). The prob lem of the self is explore d in greater detail in Cilliers and De Villiers (2000). 12 Prigogine and Stenger (1984:7) use the meta phor of re ducing a building to a pile of bricks, in the sense of not being able to see the building for the bricks, to de scribe this reductionist method. 13 When talking about the self, the term ‘envi ron m ent’ refers to the com plete collec tion of influ ences that the self is, and has been, ex posed to: other people, the media, object s that it encoun ter s, its own history , mem o ries, per cep tions, phys i cal sen sa tions etc. 14 This dy namic is capture d best by Derrida’s notion of différance. The af fin i ties be tween com plex ity and post-struc tural theo ries are discussed at length in Chapter 5 of Cilliers (1998). 10 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1)
The most im portant charac ter isti cs of com plex system s can, for our purposes be sum ma rised in the fol low ing way: i) A com plex system s consis ts of a large num ber of el em ents. ii) The el em ents of a complex sys tem are in dy namic in ter action. This in ter action is non-linear and need not neces sar il y be inter preted in a physi cal sense; they could also be thought of in terms of transfer ence of infor m ati on. iii) Com plex system s are open system s. They inter act with their envi ron m ent and it often be comes diffi cult to define the bor ders of a sys tem. The lim its of a system are usuall y im posed on it by our descri pti on of it, not by some nat ural feature of the system . This is referred to as the problem of fram ing. iv) Com plex system s have mem ory. They evolve through time, their history is co-responsible for their inter nal struc ture and therefore also for their present be - hav iour. In what follows we argue that the self can be under stood as a com plex system , some- thing that is not pre-formed, but com es to be in socia l inter acti on. In order to survive, it must be able to adjust to its envi ron m ent. The envi ron m ent is also his tori cal ly deter - mined in a conti ngent way. The self has to oper ate within the structure s and con - straints pro vided by the en vi ron ment. At the same time, it ac tively par tic ipates in, and thereby transform s the envi ron m ent. We are therefore not born pre-programmed with an inher ent idea of what it means to be hum an, nor with a fixed idea of what the world it self is and how it should be dealt with. These ideas have to be de veloped through an engage m ent with the world. We act upon the conti ngen cie s that form part of daily life by means of a dy namic in ter ac tion be tween new in for ma tion and pre vi ous ex pe ri ence. In this way our “mem ory” of what we are is consta ntly changed. If this argu m ent is to have any power, we will have to show that the dif fer ent char acter istics of complex sys tems (dis cussed above) are rel evant to an under sta nding of the self. If we think of the self as somethin g that is con sti tuted in a sys tem of (so cial) re la - tionships , then a large num ber of el em ents are certai nly involved. What is more, each self is not a unitar y thing, but made of many differ ent sub-components consti tuted through the traces of expe ri ence d inter acti on. This is not a claim for inher ent schizo - phrenia, but rather an ac knowledge m ent of the di vided, even contra dictory nature of personhood. This com plex na ture is a result of the com plex envi ron m ent in which the self is formed. One cannot as sim ilat e the whole array of influ ence s (other people, con- versa ti ons, books, our edu ca ti on, our mate ria l circum stances, state of bodily health, our childhood mem orie s and future prospect s; in other words life, the universe and ev- ery thing) into one, neat, coher ent package. 15 15 At this point the sim ilar ity with a post-mod ern rejec tion of coher ent meta-narra tives should be obvi ous. The argu m ent from com plexity is however never an ar gu ment for rela tiv ism – cf. Cilliers (1998: 21–23, 136). Lyotard (1984: 15) provides the follow ing descri ption of the self: A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of rela tions that is now more com plex and mo bile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a per- son is al ways locate d at ‘nodal points’ of specific com muni ca tion circuits , however tiny these may be. Or better: one is alway s locate d at a post through which vari ous kinds of messages pass. No one, not even the least priv ileged among us, is ever entir ely power less over the messages that tra- verse and posi tion him at the post of sender, address ee, or ref erent. One’s mo bility in re lation to these lan guage game ef fects (lan guage games, of course, are what this is all about) is tol era ble, at least within cer tain lim its (and the limits are vague); it is even so lic ited by reg u la tory mech anism s, S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 11
The self cannot be meaning ful in isola ti on. The self is consti tuted by its rela ti on - ships to others and the world. Our envi ron m ent (context ) is conti nu all y shifting and changing and we need to adjust the sense we make of it and of oursel ves. The effect s of these inter acti ons are also not pre dict able. Things which seem im portant may turn out to be insig nif i cant , and vice versa. This is a re sult of the non-linearity of the inter - actions: small causes can have large ef fects. The self is an open system . It is im possi ble to point to some precis e boundary where “we” stop and where the world begins. To confine the self to the prison of the skull is a gross oversimplification; it is a space in which the body and the life world (nature and cul ture) in ter twine. The self is a result of its his tory. No two people can have identi cal histo rie s or find them selves in identi cal context s. Even with appar entl y very sim ilar backgrounds, the non-linear inter acti ons amongst the host of other factors which form and maintai n the self would make them differ ent. Although the self is in a way nothing more than the sed imen ta tion of its his tory in mem ory, his tory is not a simple causal force. The self is there fore nei ther an ar bi trary con struct, nor a fully de ter mined en tity. It is con sti tuted by its own unique and conti ngent history and context . To summa rise, the self is not a complete and co her ent en tity pres ent to itself. It is consti tuted through the com plex inter acti on amongst a host of factors, the signif i canc e of which cannot be pinpoint ed with final it y. Our sense of self is the result of transie nt patter ns in this network of traces. Consci ousness is an emergent propert y of this net- work, not a cen tral con trol sys tem that “causes” the ex pe ri ence of the self. Viewing the self as re lati onal makes for a more flexi ble way of under sta nding how we come to be who we are. De spite the fact that the self is not fully de ter mined, it is still quite pos si - ble to talk about someone’s identi ty or beli efs in a meaning ful way. By ar guing that identi ty cannot be fixed, we are not suggest ing that identi ty is fragm ented and arbi - trary. A com plex system is neither hom oge neous nor random ; it has struc ture, even if this structure is conti nu ously transform ed. Just as words cannot have meaning if they are not re peat able or iterable,16 the struc tures in a com plex system must be identi fiable . Trans form ati on cannot be other than the transfor m ati on of somethi ng specif ic into somethi ng which can be recog nise d as a new form of the previ ous structure . There is thus no contra dicti on involved if we deny an essentialist under sta nding of the self, but still talk of someon e’s “iden tity”. How ever, this iden tity can not be sep a rated from its embeddedness in socia l condi ti ons, and will therefore al ways have a poli ti cal dim en- sion. This as pect will re ceive at ten tion in the fi nal sec tion. “Eth ics” and the com plex self The form ati on and devel op m ent of the self cannot be under stood in isola ti on of the so- cial do main. This en tails that eth ical and po liti cal con sid er ations are al ways at stake, albeit not “ethics ” in the norm ati ve or middle- class sense of the word. The argu m ent is not that we can deduce a certai n ethi cal framework within which the self should func - and in par ticu lar by the self-adjust m ents the system un dertakes in order to im prove its per form ance. It may even be said that the system can and must encour age such movem ent to the extent that it com bats its own en tropy; the novelty of an unex pecte d ‘move’, with its cor rela tive displace ment of a partner or group of partners, can supply the system with that incre ased performativity it forever dem ands and con sumes. 16 Derrida’s es say Sig na ture Event Con text, as well as the impor tant Afterword to Lim ited Inc pro vides a backdrop to the ar gu ment here (see Derrida 1988). 12 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1) tion, nor do we argue for a set of ethi cal cri teria which would identi fy a self as be ing “authen ti c”. The kind of ethics we argue for has more to do with the inev i ta bil ity of choice. The use of the noti on “choice”, however, does not refer to choices made in ab- solut e free dom, but to choices made within a net work of socia l constra ints. The di- lemma of being re sponsi ble for your choices whilst at the same time not be ing total ly free to make them, is already alluded to in the apho rism concern ing the land of the can ni bals. We will re turn to how this eth ics works in a Nietzschean way af ter we have exam ined what it means in the context of com plexit y. We have argued above for the incompressibility of a com plex system . This means that a com plex system cannot be replac ed with somethi ng which is sim pler without distor ti on. We have also argued that com plex system s are open system s, that is, that it is not possi ble to define the boundari es of a sys tem clearly. When we deal with a com - plex system , we have to deal with its envi ron m ent as well – system and envi ron m ent are not clearly sep ara ble. When we try to de scribe or un der stand a com plex sys tem, it is never self-evident what should be include d and what not. For a com plete under - standing, we would have to include ev ery thing. Under fi nite condi ti ons (like being hu- man), we cannot do that. We have to choose what is going to be include d in the de- scripti on and what not. There is no resort to a transce nden tal viewpoint which can de - ter mine those choices. This does not mean that we can es cape choice. When we try to un der stand some thing com plex, we have to re duce the com plexit y in order to bring it within our grasp – there is no other choice. We are doomed to make choices; distor - tions are an in ev ita ble part of the at tempt to de scribe the world. The choices we make can, however, not be purely arbi tra ry. The com plexit y we are trying to under sta nd is not feature less. There are patter ns and structure s which constra in our de scripti ons. We cannot find a pure de scripti on, and at the same time we cannot just come up with any descri pti on. The strategy behind the descri pti on forms part of the descri pti on. Since our descri pti ons are never purely objec ti ve, we are respon si ble for them.17 In order to give some substa nce to this “ethi cal ” under sta nding of the self, we can look at a num ber of spe cific charac ter isti cs fol lowing from com plexit y (as dis cussed in the pre vi ous sec tion): 1. The self is consti tuted relationally. It cannot be concei ved of in isola ti on. This does not mean that it has no identi ty. The identi ty of a certai n, singu lar self is con - sti tuted by the pat tern of re la tion ships per tain ing to that self. The re la tion ships are mostly with other selves which are also con sti tuted relationally.18 2. The set of rela ti onships at stake is conti ngent, not meta physi cal ly deter mined. The dif fer ences which ex ist among selves – and there are dif fer ences – are also the re - sult of conti ngent, not a priori , fac tors. 3. The form ati on of the self is a dynam ic proces s which does not ter minate in some form if complete ness is reached. The self is there fore always “still to come”. What we have at any given point is provi siona l. 4. The set of re lation ships at stake is a result of the spe cific his tory of a cer tain self. Rela tion ships are sedimented in mem ory traces. Since these traces are all over lap - ping and in ter act ing (the self is a pa limpsest) , the his tory of the self is not a clear 17 See Cilliers (2000, 2001) for a more de tailed ar gum ent. 18 This is equiva lent to a kind of Saussurian system of signs. For a discus sion of the sim ilar ities betwee n com plexity and structura l/post-struc tural descri p tions, see Cilliers (1998: 37–47). S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 13
de ter min ing force. Some traces are re in forced, oth ers fade away. Memory and for - getti ng go hand in hand.19 The self is nothing but its his tory, but its history cannot be decoded into a single, well-structured narra ti ve. 5. The patter n of rela ti onships is not fully inte grat ed into a unitar y whole at any spe- cific mom ent in time ei ther. This means that more than one perspec tive on the self is pos sible. It cannot be reduced to somethi ng essen ti al which can be capture d with a sin gle de scrip tion. Dif fer ent as pects of the self are ac tivated in dif fer ent con texts. 6. The self is not transpar ent to it self. In other words, the self is not a homunculus lo- cated somewhere inside . The conti ngent, histor i cal and rela ti onal na ture of the self implies that the self dis cov ers it self in space and time – the self emerges from its acti ons, not from some es senti al de scripti on of what it is or should be. This is not an argu m ent for a discon ti nu ous self, but for the fact that the self cannot es cape its own com plex ity.20 7. This adds up to a self that is somehow fragil e and robust at the same time. It is frag ile in the sense that it can be altered dras tically through ex pe ri ence, but since it is a re lational – not an es sen tial – en tity, there is no core that can be de stroyed. The self can thus maintai n an identi ty which under norm al circum stances will re - main stable, but when placed under pres sure, can be transform ed. Finding a bal- ance betwee n sta bil ity and change is part of the proces s of form ing a meaning ful self – one that is nei ther stagnant nor at the mercy of every flut ter in the envi ron - ment. From the complex ity per spec tive, the self can, in summ ary, not be seen as self- identical or essen ti al. It com es to be through dynam ic inter acti on with the envi ron m ent and other selves. These in ter actions are “sedimented” in time – the self is a prod uct of its his tory. Nev er the less, the self is not fully de ter mined, not by its his tory, nor by its pres ent, con tin gent sit u a tion. The pat terns of in ter ac tion con sti tut ing the self are too com plex to be reduced to somethi ng singu lar . Yet, when we try to under sta nd or eval - uate oursel ves and others, we have to perform a kind of reduc ti on. This reduc ti on can- not be made objec ti vely, and therefore we inev i ta bly have to deal with an ethi cal di- mension. We cannot give a com plete, form al de scripti on of a com plex system in terms of a fi nite set of ra tional princi ples , which means that when we deal with com plex things, like hum an subject s, we cannot get by with calcu la ti on alone. We have to make use of frameworks and assum pti ons. Since there are no meta-rules which supply these frameworks, we have to make choices based on values, rather than on rati onal knowl- 19 The abil ity to for get is a pre-req ui site for the abil ity to re mem ber traces in a complex net work of rela - tionships. See Cilliers (1998: 45–46, 92). 20 This intransparency is one of the centra l issues in a Freud ian under stand ing of the self, also emphasised by Nietzsche in ‘On Truth and Lie In a Non-Moral Sense’ (p. 80) in the follow ing way: What does man actu ally know about him self? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive him self com - pletely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him – even concer ning his own body – in or der to confine and lock him within a proud, decep tive con - sciousness, aloof from the coils of the bow els, the rapid flow of the blood stream, the intri cate quiv- ering of the fibres! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curi os ity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the cham ber of conscious ness and then suspect that man is sus tained in the in differ ence of his igno rance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insa tia ble, and murder ous – as if hanging in dreams on the back of a ti ger. Given this sit ua tion, where in the world could the drive of truth have come from? 14 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1) edge or the outcom e of calcu la ti ons. Another way to form ulat e this is to say that we are al ways al ready in the realm of eth ics. Since we can not shift the re spon sibil ity for our deci sions onto any fixed or given proce dure, we have to assum e that re sponsi bil - ity. Yet such respon si bil ity for our de cisions and ac tions, in cluding their im pact on the lives of others, is not a burden we have to bear; it is what makes us who we are. This si multa neous in de ter minacy and inescapability of eth ics in re la tion to the self may be clari fie d through a further consid er ati on of the noti on of the will to power that was intro duced in sec tion one. Will to power, for Nietz sche, may be under stood as the qualit y (as opposed to “es sence”) of irresolvable tension and contes t betwee n the con - stel la tions of forces that con sti tute the world. The will to power in this sense “is not a being, not a becom ing, but a pa thos – the most ele m en tal fact from which a becom ing and ef fect ing first emerge –” (WP 635). This pa thos (oc ca sion, pas sion, suf fer ing) is pre cisely not a state, an enti ty, the unchang ing substra tum upon which the changing, ap par ent world is erected. Rather, the will to power describes the qual ity of the cease - less strug gle be tween what Nietzsche calls “dy namic quanta”, each of which only ex - ists by virtue of its rela ti on to all other dy namic quanta (ibid.). These power quanta “do not first exist for them selves and then enter a rela ti onship with one another . They ex ist only in the (in ces santly chang ing) referentiality of all to all” (Müller-Lauter 1999:15), and it is the mutual struggle or antag o nism inher ent in this referentiality that condi ti ons the emergence of all events (ibid:13). Given this under sta nding of the will to power, the self is not a “thing” among other things in the world, but an emergent propert y of the dy namic conste lla ti on of forces that is the will to power. For Nietz sche, con trary to the essentialist un der stand ing of the self as a pre-formed subject which first exist s, and then engages in a num ber of ac - tivi ti es, some of them belong ing in the realm of ethics and others not, the self as a con- stella ti on of will to power is al ways al ready engaged in moral eval ua ti on. Every expe - rience of the world, in so far as it becom es consci ous, is already a rank-ordering, a choice for one pos sible inter preta ti on of the world amidst an infi nit e range of possi ble inter preta ti ons. To inter pret is to set up a certain way of seeing, a certai n way of know- ing on the basis of an evalu a ti on of what is worth see ing and worth knowing. In this re gard, “All ex pe ri ences are moral ex pe ri ences, even in the realm of sense per cep tion” (GS 114); ev ery perspec tive on the world is al ready a value judgm ent. For Nietzsche , al though our judg ments are only int erpre t ati ons, we rem ain respon s i- ble for them, not in the sense of being auton o mous agents who freely choose their be- liefs and prac tices and therefor e can not blame any other agency for these choices, but in the sense of be ing inex tri cably bound up with, and thus respon si ble for, the world which both forms and is formed by our inter preta ti ons. This embeddedness can be un- derstood as an “il log i cal orig i nal re la tion ship with all things” (HAH I, 31), whereby every inter preta ti on is neither a functi on of a self-sufficient subject -identity nor sim ply caus ally deter mined by forces out side the self, but a “quan tita tive particularization” of the will to power (Müller-Lauter 1999: 133). Nietz sche de scribes this particularisation as a “com plex form of spec ific ity” or “perspec tive” which, by virtue of its conti ngent posi ti on within a com plex of rela ti ons can never encom pass all pos si ble in ter pre ta tions of the world (WP 636). The kind of divine under sta nding that would com prehend exis - tence as a whole, cannot but elude the conti ngent self, who therefore has to S. Afr. J. Philos. 2002, 21(1) 15
learn to grasp the sense of perspec tive in every value judg ment – the dis place- ment, dis tor tion and merely ap par ent te le ol ogy of ho ri zons and whatever else per tains to perspectivism; […] the nec es sary injus ti ce in every For and Against, in jus tice as in sep a ra ble from life, life it self as con di tioned by the sense of per- spec tive and its in jus tice (HAH I, Pref ace 6). This acknowl edge m ent of the im possi bil ity of a just evalu a ti on of the world, coupled with the in ev i ta bil ity of judg ment, has a num ber of eth i cal-political im pli ca tions. Nietzsche ’s concep ti on of both self and world re cognise s that no per spec tive, no sin - gu lar iden tity, can ever re flect the en tire dy namics of the world as will to power, and that any “order” we might im pose upon the world is a parti cu lar , change able inter pre- tati on that is alway s open to resis tance and subver sion. This recog ni ti on therefore im - plies that there is a limit to what we can “know” about the self and about the world which con di tions the self. The meta phys i cal in her i tance of mo der nity, by con trast, ac- knowledges no such limit: it rests on the presum pti on of an ideall y ordered world, or at least a world sus cepti ble to the or der we im pose upon it. This pre sumpti on of order, either as re alit y or as future achievem ent, condi ti ons the beli ef that anythi ng that hints at disorder, exces s, or resis tance stands in need of suppres sion, exclu sion or punish - ment. This presum pti on also reli es on a suppos edly “neutra l and objec ti ve” view of the self which in fact does vio lenc e to the subject in ques tion. It disre gards crucia l com po - nents of what makes up a person. It leads to a kind of “colonis ati on” of subject s: “we know what a subject is, therefore we know what you re ally are, and therefore we know how to treat you”. These vio la ti ons do not only af fect the others in questi on, but ul ti - mately also those who com mit the vi ola ti on. Such an approach leads to a disre gard of dif fer ence, to a so cial ho mogeni sa tion, and there fore to an im pov er ished en vi ron ment. Since we can only come to be within a socia l envi ron m ent, a poorer, or less com plex, en vi ron ment will de prive those who live in that en vi ron ment of cer tain pos si bil i ties. Yet, the fos ter ing of dif fer ence will yield the op po site re sult. 21 Nietzsche , in dealing with differ ence in the context of socia l organi sa ti on, consis - tently identi fies the most im portant qualit y of such organi sa ti on as the “pa thos of dis- tance” (cf. es pe cially BGE 257; TI IX, 37) – liter all y, the sense of re moteness or dis- tinctness from one another that is never the les s a pre condi ti on for communality. In a tell ing aph o rism from Human, All Too Human , he ex presses the re lation ship between these two poles as fol lows: “[i]t is not in how one soul approache s another but in how it dis tances it self from it that I rec og nize their af fin ity and re lat ed ness” (HAH II, 251). The point here is that our “affin it y” or sense of communality – in other words, the ac- knowledge m ent of our embeddedness within a net work of inter-human rela ti ons – de- pends preci sely upon the recog ni ti on of our diffe ren t ia t ion. Hom ogenis ati on, or any no tion of communality based upon the be lief in “sim ilar souls” exist ing apart from any so cial dif fer en tia tion, limits the pos si ble ways of con ceiv ing of one self as well as re lat - ing to others. In Nietzsche ’s ac count, this lim ita ti on is pri maril y a condi ti on for the op - pression of the unvar ied subject s of mass soci ety : beings who are “wholly struc ture, 21 This is not to say that this al terna tive un der stand ing of the self is neces sarily a dem o cratic one, at least not in the sense in tended by stan dard lib eral dem o cratic theory. In Nietzsche’s case es pe cially, dem o - cracy itself is open to ques tioning in so far as it fails to acknowl edge – even more, to stim u late – an un- re solv able con test be tween in di vid u als (cf. HAH I, 472; GS 356; BGE 202). However , as it is not the purpose of this arti cle to develop a theory of dem ocrac y, these consid er ations lie be yond the scope of our in ves ti ga tion. 16 S. Afr. J, Philos. 2002, 21(1) im age, form without dem onstra ble content and, unhap pil y, ill-designed form and, what is more, uniform ” (Nietzsche UDH 5).22 Against this background, the unde ter mined, conti ngent self advo cat ed by Nietzsche and supporte d by the argu m ents from com - plexit y theory consti tutes a counter -force to the forms of poli ti cal dom ina ti on that is exer cis ed over what is assum ed to be an hom oge nous or amorphous socia l body. An em phasis on the poli ti cal dim ension of the com plex self rem inds us of the inev i - tabil ity of ethi cal involve m ent. We are formed by our inter venti ons in the world (or lack of them), while also shaping others by them. We are not com pleted subject s who have to make de cisions and act upon them. Rather, we, and the worldly dom ain in which we exist , come to be through those de cisions and ac tions, while the choice to ab stain from certain ac tions is an equally for mative eth ical-p olitical choice. It is our conten ti on that this under sta nding of the self that de rives from the respec - tive argu m ents drawn from Nietzsche and com plexit y theory provides a counter weight to the canni bal ism of unqual i fie d privacy or col lec tivity . We have tried to show in this paper how these argu m ents converge in a spe cific attem pt to repre sent the disunit y and contra dicti on that spring from our embeddedness in the world in a way that neither suppress es any inti mati on of com plexit y in favour of an essentialist noti on of the self, nor dissolve s all coher ent identi ty into endles s, arbi tra ry movem ent. Such a concep ti on of the self al lows for a consid er ati on of the extent to which we exist within a conti n - gent network of rela ti ons to which we never the les s rem ain bound in every attem pt to be come what we are. This net work is precisely what lies be tween the self and the crowd; it is what both binds us togethe r and differ en ti ates us from one another ; the condi ti on for both affin it y and distanc e. To conclude : At the meet ing point betwee n Nietzsche and com plexit y theory lies a concep ti on of a dy namic, worldly self that is nei ther arbi tra ry or subjec ti ve, nor bound by fixed, objec ti ve rules – a fragil e self, in other words, that exist s within the tension betwee n unity and disso nance , order and multi plicit y, soli tude and communality. This under sta nding of the self is not merely of aca dem ic inter est; it has both ethi cal and po- liti cal sig nif icanc e. At the cen tre of this per spec tive stands con sid er ation for the world - li ness of hum an exis tenc e: the fact that who one is – the questi on of self – is bound up with a world shared with others. The self, in other words, is al ways em bedded in hu- man communality, and only exist s within a network of hum an rela ti ons. Both sets of argu m ents have shown that this network is not a fixed structure , but rather cir cum - scribes a dom ain of worldly engage m ent that is charac ter ised by provisionality, het ero - gene it y and com plexit y. On this view, we are unavoid ably im pli cated in the fragil e realm of hu man af fairs, so that to give form to a self is in trin si cally linked to sus tain - ing a hum an world in which we exist in the plural .
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