Self-Creation in Nietzsche Andrew Crown-Weber University of Kentucky
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Kaleidoscope Volume 7 Article 11 September 2015 Autopoiesis: Self-Creation in Nietzsche Andrew Crown-Weber University of Kentucky Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kaleidoscope Part of the Philosophy Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Crown-Weber, Andrew (2008) "Autopoiesis: Self-Creation in Nietzsche," Kaleidoscope: Vol. 7, Article 11. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kaleidoscope/vol7/iss1/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Office of Undergraduate Research at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kaleidoscope by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AUTHOR Andrew Crown-Weber am a Senior English and Linguistics major. I participated in the Gaines Fellowship and the Autopoiesis: I Honors Program. I received the John Spalding Gatton Provost’s Scholarship in the Arts and Sci- Self-Creation in ences and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Next year I will teach English as a Second Language in Nietzsche a small town in Austria via the Fulbright Program. Faculty Mentor: Dan Breazeale Professor, Department of Philosophy Abstract Mr. Andrew Crown-Weber’s essay, “Autopoesis: Self-Creation in A recurrent theme in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche,” was easily the best and most original essay I have re- Nietzsche is his imperative that we must create ceived from any of my undergraduate students in several years. ourselves. Though this theme of self-creation runs He wrote the essay as a term paper for my class on “Nietzsche: throughout the entirety of his published works, First to Last,” and the paper reveals a sophisticated and broad grasp not Nietzsche neither fully articulates in one place just of Nietzsche’s entire corpus (an impressive enough feat in its own the processes and guidelines by which such self- right), but also of the difficult issues and problems that surround the creation could occur, nor does he fully resolve the favorite Nietzschean injunction to “become who you are.” Mr. Crown- paradoxes inherent in this concept. This paper Weber does a fine job of sorting out and criticizing the implications of attempts to distill from these fragments a coherent both the “essentialist” and “existentialist” theories of self-hood, and he interpretation of both how we can and why we demonstrates convincingly that Nietzsche actually adheres most closely should, despite (or, paradoxically, because of) our to the latter, while still employing some of the language of the former. many external and internal constraints, fashion Mr. Crown-Weber also has the courage to take on one of the leading ourselves the way an artist shapes a work of art. lights among contemporary Nietzsche scholars (Brian Leiter), and, in my view, he successfully demolishes Leiter’s influential “fatalistic” and “natu- Introduction ralistic” account of Nietzsche’s view of the self. Mr. Crown-Weber’s inter- Throughout his works, one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s pretation of Nietzsche’s denial of free will as a part of his campaign against most common and consistent calls was for his read- Christianity is interesting and provocative, and his novel interpretation of ers to create themselves — at least those capable of the “automatic” and “aesthetic” dimensions of Nietzschean self-creation creating themselves. We hear the first notes of this is very promising and original. Equally impressive is his suggestion that call sounded in Nietzsche’s first published work, the value of an “egoistic” act depends on the value of the person who per- The Birth of Tragedy, when Nietzsche talks of our forms it. Surely this goes to the heart of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and Mr. “status as art works” and how the “genius in the Crown-Weber offers a sympathetic and insightful discussion of this point act of creation” becomes “at once subject, object, with a nuanced response to several anticipated objections to the same. poet, actor and audience.” This idea of shaping one- Finally, this essay is a pleasure to read. It is artfully composed and self as an “aesthetic phenomena” (BT, 5) is finally beautifully written. announced explicitly by the middle period when Nietzsche asserts: “We, however, want to become those we are — human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who cre- ate themselves” (GS, 335). Here we see Nietzsche adding nuances to this idea, knotting together his maxim “become who you are” with the project of self-creation. As we shall see, self-creation is the means by which one becomes what one is. Even in Nietzsche’s last productive year we find him giv- ing Goethe the highest praise when he announces that Goethe “disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself” (TI, IX, 49). This essay will first examine Nietzsche’s conception of the self and then 46 K A L E I D O S C O P E 2 0 0 8 A UTO P OIESIS : S ELF - C REATION IN N IETZSCHE A NDRE W C RO W N -W E B ER turn to how Nietzsche believes we can create ourselves Nietzsche’s uses of essentialist tropes are the excep- and why he believes we should. In order to understand tions that prove the rule of his dynamic conception of what Nietzsche means by ‘self-creation’ we will need self. He uses essentialist rhetoric as a skillful means of to examine that self’s interaction with the external encouraging us, because it is reassuring to believe the world and grapple with many seeming contradictions fiction of having a ‘true’ self one only needs to find — for in Nietzsche’s philosophy that threaten to muddle this this frees us of the responsibility of creation by saying encomium into meaninglessness. we need only uncover this self. However, at bottom, Ni- etzsche concurs with Zarathustra when he says: “Some The Self souls one will never discover, unless one invents them We face our first contradiction when looking at first” (Z, 154). Thus the ‘to be’ in the mixed message Nietzsche’s view of the self. At first blush he seems maxim “become who you are,” can be understood as an to give both an ‘essentialist’ and an ‘existentialist’ ideal, unattainable shaping of our becoming in such a account of the self. An essentialist account is one way that one “create[s] and carr[ies] together into One in which each person has an essential core, a True what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident” (Z, Self, which lies at ‘the base’ of the personality and 252) in order to approximate the perfection associated character, analogous to the Christian concept of ‘the with the idea of ‘soul’ or ‘true self’. soul.’ This essential core, because it is an extremely Nietzsche’s view differs from the prototypical specific entity, is static, unchanging, and therefore it existentialist account of the self, embodied in Sartre’s is often associated with the concept of ‘Being,’ that philosophy. For Sartre, we choose what we become is, something eternal and otherworldly, the prime and are therefore responsible for every aspect of our example of Being being God. The existentialist ac- becoming, of our self. Nietzsche does not take such count of the self is contained in the phrase ‘existence a radical stand. Although I will argue that Nietzsche precedes essence.’ Existentialists deny the existence does believe we can choose aspects of what we become, of any essential self, typically because they deny the there are undeniable determinants of our behavior that existence of any essential Being in the world, which limit our ability to choose. These determinants include is typically the source of the essential self. Without the totality of external events outside of our control, or the boundaries of essence, the self dynamically changes ‘fate,’ or unchosen but fundamental internal aspects of over time. ourselves, such as our genetics and drives. For Nietzsche, Nietzsche seems to use the language of essential- the autonomy necessary for self-creation will have to ism when he says that each person has “a productive occur within the constraints of unchosen external and uniqueness within him at the core of his being” (UM, internal factors. 143) or urges people to “Be yourself! All that you are now It is precisely regarding the issue of our autonomy doing, thinking, and desiring is not really yourself” (UM, that Brian Leiter raises a paradox that questions the 127). These both imply a ‘true’ self outside of current possibility of self-creation. Nietzsche’s troubling and appearances. However, when we examine Nietzsche’s unclear position toward determinism and fatalism ques- philosophy as a whole, we find that Nietzsche’s account tions the autonomy considered necessary for a person to of the self leans toward the existentialist conception and create him or herself. To use Leiter’s example: If I were favors the dynamic model. brainwashed into becoming a criminal, though I would Thus, we see Nietzsche asserting that “the unalter- be causally responsible for the criminal activity, we able character,” a hallmark of the static conception of would not intuitively say that I had ‘created’ myself as a self, “is not in the strict sense true” (HH, 41). He believes criminal. Leiter claims that: “Nietzsche the fatalist views it is only laziness and the shortness of life that lead us a person like a plant: just as… the essential natural facts to delude ourselves into thinking of our character and about a tomato plant determine its development… so ourselves as given, monolithic facts. As he says: “Man too the essential natural facts about a person determine becomes that which he wills to become, his willing pre- its development” (Leiter, 223).