Nietzsche on Freedom

One of the very few matters of nearly universal agreement with respect to Nietzsche interpretation, one that bridges the great analytic/continental divide, is that Nietzsche was offering some sort of account of freedom, in contradistinction to the ‘ascetic’ or ‘slavish’ ways of the past. What remains in dispute is the character of this account. In this paper I present Nietzsche’s account of freedom and his arguments for the superior cogency of that account relative to other accounts of freedom, including irony about the possibility of freedom. The role of an account of freedom is to offer an explanation of the ‘force’ of norms or values that takes this form: this norm is authoritative because of the integral role it plays in my (or our) free self-determination. So there are two basic components of such an account. One is that norms are compelling because they are self-imposed; one adheres to a norm on pain of not being true to oneself. The other basic component is that such norms, although self-imposed, are nevertheless to be understood as constraints because they might (and likely will) conflict with whatever motivational states or preferences that one happens to be moved by. An account of freedom takes for granted that a person’s identity is in some sense distinct from her merely contingent attributes, or at least that a distinction can be made between the acts and preferences that she herself is responsible for, and those that are externally imposed. We recognize that certain influences (physical, ideological, etc.) can impose on a person; an account of freedom presents a picture of what it is to rise above or take charge of those influences in terms of holding oneself to certain standards. The typical interpretation of Nietzsche’s version of freedom is: freedom is whatever certain elite, completely unencumbered individuals say it is. In Heidegger’s influential interpretation, Nietzsche’s account of freedom was the final and calamitous attempt at Cartesian certainty. In his quest for something about which one could not go wrong, this reading goes, Nietzsche characterized freedom as purely subjective determination, thus initiating the end of the metaphysical tradition, and a host of modern ills. That Nietzsche’s account takes this form is agreed upon by both the inspired1 and the unsympathetic.2 The detail that remains to be settled, of course, is who these subjective determiners are. That is, although the free are capable of incorrigible self-expression, most of humanity is quite assuredly unfree, and the standard by which one tells the two groups apart remains a subject of debate. Some interpreters make appeal to one of the explanatory terms from the historical account: e.g. ‘active’, ‘free from ressentiment’, ‘affirmative’, ‘masterly’. Others find recourse in one of the seemingly metaphysical notions that can occasionally be found