Dancing in Chains: A History of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Physiological Relativism BENJAMIN DAVID MITCHELL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2016 © Benjamin Mitchell, 2016 ii Abstract This study examines the historical development of Friedrich Nietzsche’s physiological relativism through a reading of his private and published works as well as several of the periodicals and scientific popularizations with which he was familiar. Nietzsche’s early interest in the relationship between genius and physiology was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer’s insistence that geniuses were able to intuitively understand the objective world because of their unique physiological organization. However, the more physiology Nietzsche encountered the more doubts he had about Schopenhauer’s philosophical claims and Richard Wagner’s re- articulation of them. Nietzsche’s rejection of Schopenhauer and Wagner can be seen in his changing assessment of the limits of knowledge and the meaning of genius, of physiological, moral, and psychological vivisection, and how he came to see a close relationship between cruelty, necessity, and knowledge. Nietzsche’s understanding of life as a process of dynamic self-regulation featured many similarities with other physiological thinkers of his age including Claude Bernard and his idea of the milieu intérieur and Hermann von Helmholtz’s account of the active nature of perception. Nietzsche’s interest in educational reform, experimentation, and self- fashioning was a further development of his exploration of how organisms and individuals achieved a state of relative freedom and independence through their interdependence from their physical and cultural environments. His interest in the intersection of physiology, aesthetics, and epistemology led him to define meaningful freedom and creativity in terms of how individuals related to their own limitations and crafted new limitations for themselves. Even basic physiological perceptions were creative, for just as perceptions shaped ideas and experiences, ideas and experiences shaped perceptions. Nietzsche’s understanding of creativity within limits was the compliment of his idea of how an individual’s independence was achieved through more refined forms of interdependence with their physical, perceptual, cultural, and cosmic environments. The Übermensch was the culmination of this process, which Nietzsche described as “dancing in chains.” Just as organisms and individuals achieved states of relative independence through interdependence with their environments, the Übermensch’s independence was achieved through how they “tamed contingency” by assimilating the cosmos in its entirety by willing the eternal return of the same. iii Acknowledgments One of the major themes of this work is the close relationship between independence and interdependence; that they are not, in fact, opposites, but are essential for each other. We become more of our selves the more we work with others. With this in mind I would like to thank those who helped make this project possible. I would like to first thank my committee: Dr. Joan Steigerwald, Dr. Bernard Lightman, and Dr. Gregory Moore, as well as Dr. Ernst Hamm; I was fortunate to have for all practical purposes a committee of four instead of the usual three. I would also like to thank Dr. Brayton Polka for giving me invaluable insight into the inner workings of the cult of genius. I would also like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship I received during my doctoral studies. My father, Allister Graham Mitchell, never completed high school. As far as I can tell he joined the military for stable work and to see the world. His curiosity and sense of wonder, and his encouragement that I, at least, should be formally educated, helped get me to where I am today. Many of the contributions I am thankful for went beyond the merely academic. Without this emotional labour my own intellectual labour would not have been possible. I would like to thank Dr. Aryn Martin, whose humane intervention helped me through the dreary December of 2015, as well as Dr. Gordon McOuat. His humane and inspiring council helped keep me alive at the end of my masters. My social support network has been invaluable; the eclectic collection of graduate students, goths, pagans, bohemians, farmers, convalescents, LGBTQ activists, pet groomers, and anarchists who I am pleased to call my friends. They have endured hearing my concerns and anxieties about the meaning of my work and its vicissitudes. Sarah and Brendan Tihane, Milo Nixon, Toby LePage, Dani Pacey, Scott Bohaker, Selena Phillips-Boyle, Max Baru, Abigaël Candelas de la Ossa, Alec Shaw, Vladislav Sekulic, and Steven Oickle, thank you for your presence. I would like to especially thank Gwyndaf Garbutt, my friend and housemate; Over the years I have been inspired by your dedication to what you think is right, your careful reflections, and personal endurance, and I am grateful for your friendship. iv Finally, I would like to thank my psychologist Dr. Jennifer Hilborn. She is the first person I have ever worked with who has been able to acknowledge the political dimensions of mental health in academia. This acknowledgement in and of itself has been healing, and she has done much more than merely acknowledge. Thank you for helping me feel heard, and worthy of being heard. Academia is facing a crisis of its mental health and wellbeing. More of us need to realize that as intellectual and emotional labourers we suffer from intellectual and emotional ailments. The hierarchies we participate in are abusive and lacking in transparency. These are not just personal problems that we have to face alone. They are systemic artefacts of the neoliberal university and they affect all of us. The sooner we turn our hard-earned skills to understanding and dismantling this classist edifice, the sooner we can change what it means to be not just scholars of the humanities, but humane scholars, and set up a welcoming hearth in place of this ivory tower. v Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... v List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................... vii Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: [The Frame of Genius] ............................................................................ 20 [Embodying Genius: Schopenhauer’s Indifferent Ideal] ................................... 24 [The Rebirth of Schopenhauer from the Spirit of Wagner] ............................... 30 [The Artistic Lange: Lange, Socrates, and Genius] ........................................... 35 [Lange’s Comparisons and von Baer’s lecture “Which Conception of Living Nature is the Correct One?”]............................................................................... 40 [The Timely Meditations] ................................................................................... 51 [Wagner, All Too Wagner] ................................................................................. 57 [Conclusion] ........................................................................................................ 64 Chapter Two: [Nietzsche as Vivisectionist] .................................................................... 67 [Schopenhauer’s Mercies: Wagner, Weber, and Antivivisection in Germany] .. 71 [The Curare-arrow of Knowledge] ...................................................................... 80 [Zöllner’s Psychological Vivisection] ................................................................. 90 [The Bayreuther Blätter and the Brothers Förster] ............................................. 101 [Knowledge as Cruelty] ...................................................................................... 105 [Conclusion] ........................................................................................................ 113 Chapter Three: [A Vision of Self-Regulation] ................................................................ 116 [Nietzsche, Organic Unity, and the Importance of the Internal Environment] ... 120 [Liebig, Bernard, and Nietzsche on Individual and Organic Independence] ...... 122 [Connections Between Nietzsche and Bernard] .................................................. 128 [Hiding in the Realm of a Transfigured Physis] .................................................. 136 [The Free Spirit’s Mutual Education] .................................................................. 142 [Nietzsche and Experimentation] ......................................................................... 151 [Conclusion] ......................................................................................................... 159 Chapter Four: [Physio-aesthetic Epistemology and the Freedom of the Übermensch] ... 162 [Nietzsche on Perception: Physiological