Nietzsche’s Fatalism: Interview with Brian Leiter

The central charter of this series is exploring the evolving relationship among science, philosophy, and faith, with a focus on the import of modern physics and technology. In an earlier post, Sean D. Kelly traced the genealogy of redemption in the Western tradition and, previewing his upcoming book, The Proper Dignity of Human Being, discussed the existential threat of technology. Sean explored how salvation has taken the form of an economic exchange in the Judeo-Christian tradition and its Enlightenment inheritors. Whether we are redeemed or bought back in Christian terms, possessed like a property right with Enlightenment figures, or authentic with the Existentialists, redemption has centered around self-ownership. Sean elaborated on the unwitting danger of modern self-actualization, where mastery underlies a technological form of being. He contends that we need a new understanding for our moment in history, where authenticity does not flow entirely from spontaneous action, and our free actions are meaningful in the complimentarity between us and the world, a world whose significance simultaneously governs our action and is grounded in it.

This piece will further explore the history of redemption in the Western tradition, with a focus on Nietzsche’s fatalism and notion of mastery. Sean used Nietzsche as an exemplar of the Existential tradition, with the Ubermensch reflecting self-actualization. I would like to explore whether Nietzsche’s thoroughgoing naturalism can be seen as more consistent with Sean’s framing of authentic dignity, emphasizing how we are rooted in the world. To explore how Nietzsche’s fatalism can be situated in the discipline, I reached out to Brian Leiter, an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago. Brian has written two books on Nietzsche, Nietzsche on Morality and Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, that establish the centrality of naturalism to his philosophy.

In our interview, Brian helps frame Nietzsche’s unique deterministic vision and amor fati (love of fate), as well as interpret his revaluation of values in the context of mastery. Secondly, we discuss Nietzsche’s view of science and how he might assess our current technological predicament—whether he would conceivably share Sean’s existential warning.

Brian, thanks so much for your willingness to contribute to my series! To start with Nietzsche’s fatalism, in Nietzsche on Morality, you outline how Nietzsche rejects free will, but is best interpreted as an Essentialist versus as a Determinist. That is, every action is not preordained, but grounded in type-facts, in particular the competing drives that constitute an individual. In this view, a person is an arena of diverse impulses, and it is impossible to discern the precise cause of an action—or attribute it to an act of the “self.” As you note, it is not a Classical Determinism, but rather a form of fatalism where a person’s life has a trajectory fixed by natural facts. Your excellent analogy is the growth of a given plant. It cannot produce, for instance, a different fruit, but it can be cultivated over time, and different conditions can impact the trajectory. How, then, do you view Nietzsche as part of the Existentialist chapter—if he did not effectively have a case for individual mastery, which is overridden by natural facts?

Self-creation for Nietzsche is a phenomenon in which there is no self that chooses to create the self anew: rather, like self-mastery (which he discusses in the important Section 109 of Daybreak [1881]), it results when certain drives happen to gain the upper hand in the struggle with other drives. The person herself is as much spectator on this process as would be a third-person observer. This is wholly unlike the notion of existential freedom in Sartre; existence does not precede essence for Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s affinities with existentialism lie elsewhere: in his atheism, in his assumption that we ourselves are the source of our values, and there is no higher vindication for them to be found.

You also persuasively demonstrate that Nietzsche’s project is fundamentally and consistently normative. Although insisting there is not one set of norms for all, he is still making a comprehensive case for the revaluation of values. You note that, for Nietzsche, a universal morality would be harmful to the “higher” man, yet he still objects to Judeo-Christian morality “insofar as it is inhospitable to the realization of genius,” and thus “is a threat to life insofar as life without genius would not be experienced as worth living”. The question is whether his concern for individual aesthetic excellence can be fairly seen in more collective terms? Music and art, for instance, are forms of genius that, although created in solitude, benefit the culture more generally. Is it, then, too gracious to interpret the genius he sought to cultivate as a type of common good?

Nietzsche certainly thinks that the existence, say, of Beethoven is a good for others, for those with the requisite sensibilities to experience the aesthetic pleasure Beethoven offers. How “common” that good is is another matter: Nietzsche is an elitist, he does not think just anybody can appreciate great art or literature. The hard question for this more gracious reading, as you call it, comes when we realize that Nietzsche places such a high value on the flourishing of certain kinds of human excellence that it is a matter of indifference that it may require sacrificing the well-being of many, many others: hence his notorious remark that “every enhancement so far in the type ‘man’” has required a society based on “slavery in some sense” (Beyond Good and Evil, sec 257). If the choice is between an egalitarian society, in which there are no Beethovens, and an inegalitarian one in which there are, Nietzsche chooses the latter. Nietzsche thinks that is the choice, because he thinks Judeo-Christian morality is at threat to the flourishing of geniuses like Beethoven.

Moving to the limits of human freedom, you discuss how Nietzsche’s fatalism is best understood as what you call “Causal Essentialism”: psycho-physical facts about a person circumscribe their possible life trajectories quite dramatically. Further, it’s grounded in the context of his view that nature has no fundamental purpose. This perspective, as you note, draws on the pre-Socratics and Schopenhauer, and reflects the fact that, although the world is deterministic, there is no teleology or end. How does Nietzsche’s fatalism and his denial of teleology in nature relate to his idea of “Eternal Return” and the idea of creating values?

The idea of eternal recurrence is one of the ideas from Thus Spoke Zarathustra that, unlike the idea of the superman (Uebermensch), is of central importance for Nietzsche throughout his work of the 1880s. It is closely related to, but not the same, as his fatalism. Nietzsche generally presents eternal recurrence as an attitude one might adopt towards life: has one lived in such a way that one would gladly will the repetition of every aspect of one’s life through eternity? Of course, if fatalism is correct, then much of one’s life could not have been otherwise. The question then is whether one can “affirm” that fact, or whether one regrets it and resents it. Of course, given Nietzsche’s fatalism, whether one can affirm or denounce fatalism itself depends on the psycho-physical facts about who one really is. Nietzsche himself embraced this view in his unusual autobiography, Ecce Homo: that is, he explained that he was only able to affirm his life because he was, “at bottom, healthy” as he says.

The complication is that Nietzsche’s fatalism allows that one’s psycho-physical nature severely circumscribes one’s life trajectory, but within the range of possible outcomes, which one is realized depends on various external factors, including the values one accepts. This is why a revaluation of values is so important for Nietzsche: he thinks the continued prevalence of Judeo-Christian values will be an obstacle to the flourishing of nascent Beethovens, leading them to squander their potential in the service of altruism, pity, and egalitarian values. Value creation, per se, is not a good for Nietzsche: the slave revolt in morality, after all, involves a creation of values, but ones with many pernicious effects (their effects are not only pernicious, of course, as Nietzsche recognizes). What is essential is to resist the idea that “slavish” values are actually good for those who are not psychically slavish, that is, those who are not simply reactive and herd-like, those in whom the flame of transformative genius burns.

Finally, shifting to the nature of technology, my speculative question relates to whether Nietzsche, if he had the benefit of witnessing the ubiquity and power of technology in the modern world, might share Sean’s existential warning about its impact on our form of being (leading to banal, absolute evil)? Is his normative project, and form of Essentialism, highlighting this very kind of risk? For instance, his critique of democracy as a leveling and diminished form of man is an example of how we are inextricably embedded in our environment. In sum, especially as he described himself as “dynamite,” and “born posthumously,” please speculate on how he would interpret our technological moment in history.

Nietzsche does not share Heidegger’s anxiety about technology, which has more to do with the latter’s reactionary idealization of the German peasant, in my view. And Nietzsche has no use for the idea of “evil,” let alone “absolute evil”! Nietzsche is worried about values, not their material bases, and what he worries is that the triumph of the values of democracy, egalitarianism, the market, and nationalism will indeed reduce human beings to a kind of banality, captured by his image from Thus Spoke Zarathustra of the “last man,” “the most despicable man,” one who is “no longer able to despise himself”:

"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" thus asks the last man, and he blinks.

	The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small...

	"We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth.

	...

	No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

	"Formerly, all the world was mad," say the most refined, and they blink.

	One is clever and knows everything that has ever happened: so there is no end of derision. One still quarrels, but one is soon reconciled—else it might spoil the digestion.

This “last man” is a consequence of the dramatic break with the values of antiquity brought about by the “slave revolt” in morals, and the triumph of Christian and ascetic moralities more generally: he does not result from material or technological developments. In this regard, Nietzsche is no materialist: values have real causal power, and this is why understanding human psychology is so important for Nietzsche. How values are internalized and what role they play in psychological development are of crucial importance for him.

Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter is an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago.  Brian has written two books on Nietzsche, Nietzsche on Morality and Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, that establish the centrality of naturalism to his philosophy.

Charlie Taben

Charlie Taben graduated from Middlebury College in 1983 with a BA in philosophy and has been a financial services executive for nearly 40 years. He studied at Harvard University during his junior year and says one of the highlights of his life was taking John Rawls’ class. Today, Charlie remains engaged with the discipline, focusing on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He has worked with the APA Blog, creating the Philosophy and the Mirror of Technology Series. Charlie has also performed volunteer work for the Philosophical Society of England. You can find Charlie on Twitter @gbglax