Perhaps the most accessible part of Nietzsche’s philosophy is his idea of the “free spirit.” This comes mostly from the “middle period” of his works, when his ideas, though solid and sophisticated, were still becoming more defined. Beginning with Human, All-too-Human (HH, 1878) and going through On the Genealogy of Morality (GM, 1887) the “free spirit” appears frequently in Nietzsche’s work. Rebecca Bamford has put together a collection of essays from a variety of Nietzsche scholars investigating this aspect of his philosophy in Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy (2015).
One of the primary themes throughout this collection of 13 essays is how the free spirit is a student of and then the master of the multiplicity of drives that churn in each human being, giving an illusionary appearance of a singular self. This multiplicity is inherently ambiguous for the most part, which makes understanding it and cultivating it all the more rare.
“He says that ‘the way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as ‘mortal soul,’ and ‘soul as subjective multiplicity’, and ‘soul as social structure of the drives and affects’, want henceforth to have citizens’ rights in science (BGE [Beyond Good and Evil, 1885] 12). The subject is thus a manifold that experiences itself as multiple. The Nietzschean subject is an ‘ambiguous multiplicity’. Nietzsche speaks of an inner multiplicity of the social structure of the drives and affects’.” (page 35)
“One of the most important obligations to fulfill for the free spirit is to be master of oneself. Self-mastery entails self-knowledge. Learning things is important but it is of most importance to learn about ourselves...” (page 41)
“I qualify the Nietzschean subject as an ambiguous multiplicity, one that is the embodiment of its own fragmentation that is in a constant process of self-individuation, aiming upwards toward its authentic, fragmented and multiple ambiguous self. The Nietzschean subject, as will to power and in a constant process of self-overcoming, is the perpetual making of itself through these multiple constitutive acts that involve connecting and disconnecting its various parts as it exists in the world.” (page 43)
In typical Nietzschean fashion this very ambiguity is essentially an opportunity for the free spirit. “One must will to be what one is…The Free spirit is none other than this embrace of oneself as ambiguous multiplicity: a dynamic state of being qua becoming, not the end-goal to a linear progress of being, rather than the process of individuation itself, if and only if it is embraced authentically.” (page 43) Understanding and becoming who you really are is an on-going process of living as a free spirit. The ambiguity is, at once, the backdrop of self-discovery beyond the rules of society and culture, and, simultaneously, the reason that the free spirit is engaged in a constant revision of Becoming with ambiguity.
Strangely enough, the ambiguity reveals our capacity freedom. “Nietzsche is claiming that we are to engage in cultivating drives, and he suggests that the drive we are to cultivate are our own drives. He is also clear that knowing about our freedom to cultivate really does matter significantly to be able to exercise our drive-cultivation freedom.” (page 91)
The free spirit can not only grasp the ambiguity but can leverage it in various ways toward freedom and self-discovery. “Seed-drives include emotions such as anger, pity and vanity, and they include musing or thought. Nietzsche mentions six specific methods of cultivating drives in D [Daybreak, 1881]: (i) avoiding drive-gratification opportunities; (ii) ‘planting regularity into the drive; (iii) generating supersatiation and disgust;’ (iv) using as association of an agonizing thought; (v) redirecting one’s energy resources to a distracting end; (vi) and general exhaustion (D 209).” (page 101)
Another aspect of becoming a free spirit is to understand that this ambiguity gives rise to some “necessary errors” in human expression. Our “knowledge” is often simply invented, projected, and accepted because otherwise we would have no basis for a reasoned existence. “Nietzsche argues that there is an irresolvable conflict between reality and the presuppositions of conscious thought. Because conscious thought is only possible on the basis of certain presuppositions, such as identity, stability over time and individuation. These categories form the necessary basis for knowledge, yet they are all errors because they falsify the truth of things: the reality of absolute flux or Becoming.” (page 116)
“…those fundamental errors are not just necessary conditions for conscious thought but also necessary conditions for life. The underlying thesis is that consciousness is but an organ of the organism, and our organs, being life-enabling, can only interpret reality in a way that opposes the absolute flux of Becoming with a counter-world of durable beings. Thus, the conflict between reality or truth and thought, now becomes a conflict between truth and life. The errors of thought (Being, opposition) are not just thought-enabling, but also life-enabling, so that to negate or eliminate them would be to eliminate or destroy life - our life.
“As free spirits, we need to find a way to confront the necessary error or untruth that is our existential condition as knowers. But we need to confront it in a way that enables us to love it, to enjoy it, to celebrate it as the condition for our devotion to truth as knowers.” (page 117) In other words, free spirits accept the fundamental ignorance and illusions of being human and actually take delight in our errors as we discover who we really are.
Nietzsche often used the analogy of “dance” in various ways throughout his works to indicate a style of being. Free spirits are probably dancers but more than that, they express the light heart of laughter. “…laughter as such (or rather a very specific form of laughter) is presented from the very beginning of GS [The Gay Science, 1882] as what enables us to attain a different perspective from which to search, find, understand and also express ‘truth’, ‘Laughter’ represents a different form of knowledge and a different form of truth. Indeed, if it were not because laughter offers us a new perspective from which to search and produce knowledge, if it were not because Nietzsche had ‘good reasons’ for introducing ‘laughter’ into the process of science itself: how else could he ever convince us to overcome what he calls ‘the prejudice of science in order ‘to take things seriously’ and think well, we need to be in a bad mood, a state of irremediable seriousness (cf. GS 327).” (pp. 127 – 128)
As I have implied, enough though Nietzsche never gives a hard, fast definition of what a “free spirit” it, he does reveal many of the characteristics of such Being. Such humans are skeptical, hold on to no fixed meaning, constantly open to revision, self-critical and self-liberating, and constantly experimenting with their drives. In fact, such experimentation is a healthy sign.
“First, we need to cultivate the habits of skepticism and the suspicion of anything that smacks of dogma. This will require learning to do without the need for certainties. Further, it will involve actively engaging in exploration and experiments in knowledge that do not have any set limits…one must loosen one’s attachments to any horizon of meaning, and with this to any fixed boundary to one’s sense of self. The free spirit makes this their way of life, establishing these new habits and values as part of themselves, where previously the errors or fixed ‘truths’ have been the basis for our existence.” (page 143)
“Free spirits will be those who have a strong enough will to truth and taste for freedom to break the habits of metaphysical need and who will become freer spirits through this process of emancipation from fixed truths…Nietzsche describes the free spirit as someone who has the ‘rare and preeminent distinction, especially if continued into old age, of being able to alter his opinions!’ (D 56).” (page 145)
“Nietzsche considers holding fast to fixed beliefs to show a lack of ‘intellectual conscience’, which is a failure to ask ourselves why we take certain things to be right or true. Nietzsche urges on the knowledge seekers who rub out our existing horizons and venture into the horizon of the infinite, not knowing where knowledge will lead them and not circumventing it within a field that is compatible with accepted morality and certainties.” (page 146)
…’great health, that superfluity which grants the free spirit the dangerous privilege of living experimentally and of being allowed to offer itself to adventure: the master’s privilege of the free spirit!’ (HH I Preface 4). So the free spirit takes the risk of destroying its own horizons and boundaries so that it might create new ones.” (page 149)
“The free spirit can thereby ‘maintain the drives as the foundation of all knowing’…They live in the drives in order to understand them, and this understanding allows them to better resist the tendency of these drives to try and establish themselves as dominant and absolute, at the cost of more open horizons. The free spirit explores horizons, and being able to do without the belief that any are absolute and certain.” (page 153)
As an expression of their freedom, free spirits tend to either be solitary or require periods of solitude while being free in the negative sense of freedom from things. “One form of such independence that Nietzsche repeatedly emphasizes is independence of freedom from association: solitude, being able to withstand a lack of human companionship. Time and again, solitude is described in a sense that suggests that at least one of the ways Nietzsche conceives it is in terms of being free from the demands of others, being free from obligations, associations, and their influences.” (page 190)
Nietzsche emphasizes the need to choose ones attachments carefully, while controlling them to the extent of not becoming “stuck” with them – no doubt a difficult thing for any us. “Free spirits are not simply negatively free; they do not lack forms of attachment. Rather, the key point is that they avoid remaining stuck to such bonds – even, as Nietzsche writes, to their notion of themselves as being detached. So, it is critically important to understand this key distinction and the advantage Nietzsche thinks it affords. Attachments in themselves are not the problem; remaining stuck in any one or particular set of attachments is what Nietzsche finds so limiting.” (pp. 197 – 198)
By not becoming “stuck” we are liberated to become creative and explore the full range of drives each of us possesses. “The free spirit, on the other hand, becomes an expansive multiplicity of drives, and this potentially creates and nourishes more contenders for dominance in the soul. The free spirit, perhaps more than any type among Nietzsche’s figures, faces certain risks, including a lack of order that would diminish rather than strengthen it. The challenge of the free spirit is to actively recruit the drives and their cooperation so that it can be free in another respect, namely, free from certain kinds of disabling conflicts among the drives as well as freely enabled and fit enough to realize the kind of activity described above.” (page 200)
It is important to understand what the fundamental motivation was for Nietzsche to develop his theory of being a free spirit. Largely, it was reaction to many aspects of modernity, specifically the early capitalist and consumer influences as robbing us of our opportunity to do the contemplative work necessary to become a free spirit.
“Nietzsche laments the absence from modern life if leisure and idleness: ‘One no longer has time or energy’, he writes, ‘for ceremonies, for being obliging in an indirect way, for spirit in conversation, and for any otium at all’, since ‘living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion (GS 329). In the face of all this activity, Nietzsche calls for a return to the vita contemplativa.” (page 210)
Ultimately, however, Nietzsche’s practice of constant openness to the ambiguity gave way to a change in his thinking about free spirits. His later works reflect how his celebration of skepticism and laughter is transformed into the need to becoming something more than a free spirit, or at the very least to not become “stuck” in the idea of the free spirit. In his later work, Nietzsche’s self-critique and revision is one of the strongest aspects of his philosophy and serve also to guide us on how to remain unfixed about anything as we practice the art of Becoming.
“Simply put, those among his readers who identify themselves as free spirits are mistaken about their achievement…they are, in fact, the ‘last idealists’ whom Nietzsche describes in essay 3 of On the Genealogy of Morality. Through no fault of their own, these ‘last idealists’ are not, and never will be, the free spirits he has emboldened them to become. They are nevertheless valuable to him. Provided he can persuade them to affirm the non-negotiable limitations that attend their rank and station. His bold renunciation of the free spirit ideal in the new preface to HH thus serves as an unsubtle prompt to his best readers that the time has come for them to follow his lead.” (page 237)
“Despite their many virtues and attributes, however, these ‘last idealists’ are blind to an essential, non-negotiable feature of their identity…Like his best readers these ‘last idealists’ are in need of an insight that Nietzsche himself possesses and wishes to share. To wit: ‘They are far from being free spirits: for they still have faith in truth.’ (GM III 24).” (page 239)
“…the ‘last idealists’ among his best readers have outgrown the deal of the free spirit and can no longer afford the luxury of clinging to it. For Nietzsche and his readers, that is, the healing fiction of the free spirit, whether conceived as a sympathetic companion or an ideal of self-cultivation, has exhausted its usefulness…these ‘last idealists’ are in fact seekers of the truth, and above all else seekers of the truth about themselves. As such, they are no longer entitled to consider themselves free spirits. Continuing to do so, Nietzsche wishes them to understand, is now beneath them.” (pp. 242 – 243)
Comparatively, Nietzsche's late works make little reference to the "free spirit." Having mastered being a free spirit, one must ultimately transcend herself or himself. Here, of course, his philosophy becomes more complicated and the light openness of the free spirit becomes something heavier, something perhaps less appealing but nevertheless essential. It is one thing to master your drives and dance around unfixed by traditional restraints upon human behavior. It is another to discover what comes next in the lives of such human beings, not only beyond good and evil but beyond the idea of “truth” itself, the ultimate freedom.
Importantly, Nietzsche does not offer any specific advice in this regard. He merely states that, having learned the tools of the trade where being a free spirit is concerned, each person needs to find their own, unique way forward. We are now beyond clusters of Being, friends, family, tribes, and associations of any kind.
“Now that belief in the God of Christianity ‘is becoming more and more unbelievable (GM III 24), it is possible for the first time to inquire after the value of truth itself. If we wish to continue the progress marked by our renunciation of belief in the Christian God, that is, we will need to interrogate our allegiance to the successor deity.” (page 246)
“If they are to join him in making the will to truth conscious of itself as a problem, or so he apparently believes, they must arrive on their own at the insight that he only recently acquired for himself…the belief that he was a ‘free spirit’, in the salutary company of other ‘free spirits’, may have been decisive for his convalescence, but it was inimical to the resurgence of his health. Having disabused himself of this belief, he now encourages his best readers to do likewise. If they are to succeed in their assault on the ascetic ideal, they will need to avail themselves of the full destructive power of their residual idealism.” (page 248)
In the scope of his entire body of work, Nietzsche’s free spirit is a necessary stage to discover and master the psychic and emotional tools essential for living beyond idealism (‘the last idealists’). While the creative and light-hearted aspects of the practicing free spirit are among the most attractive qualities of Nietzsche’s work, the transcendental nature of this “phase” in personal development, as seen in his mature philosophy, is somewhat more disquieting in its evasive ambiguity. Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy is an excellent guide to this wide spectrum in his intimate philosophical journey. Being is easier than Becoming and there is no better example of that than in the free spirit itself.
One of the primary themes throughout this collection of 13 essays is how the free spirit is a student of and then the master of the multiplicity of drives that churn in each human being, giving an illusionary appearance of a singular self. This multiplicity is inherently ambiguous for the most part, which makes understanding it and cultivating it all the more rare.
“He says that ‘the way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as ‘mortal soul,’ and ‘soul as subjective multiplicity’, and ‘soul as social structure of the drives and affects’, want henceforth to have citizens’ rights in science (BGE [Beyond Good and Evil, 1885] 12). The subject is thus a manifold that experiences itself as multiple. The Nietzschean subject is an ‘ambiguous multiplicity’. Nietzsche speaks of an inner multiplicity of the social structure of the drives and affects’.” (page 35)
“One of the most important obligations to fulfill for the free spirit is to be master of oneself. Self-mastery entails self-knowledge. Learning things is important but it is of most importance to learn about ourselves...” (page 41)
“I qualify the Nietzschean subject as an ambiguous multiplicity, one that is the embodiment of its own fragmentation that is in a constant process of self-individuation, aiming upwards toward its authentic, fragmented and multiple ambiguous self. The Nietzschean subject, as will to power and in a constant process of self-overcoming, is the perpetual making of itself through these multiple constitutive acts that involve connecting and disconnecting its various parts as it exists in the world.” (page 43)
In typical Nietzschean fashion this very ambiguity is essentially an opportunity for the free spirit. “One must will to be what one is…The Free spirit is none other than this embrace of oneself as ambiguous multiplicity: a dynamic state of being qua becoming, not the end-goal to a linear progress of being, rather than the process of individuation itself, if and only if it is embraced authentically.” (page 43) Understanding and becoming who you really are is an on-going process of living as a free spirit. The ambiguity is, at once, the backdrop of self-discovery beyond the rules of society and culture, and, simultaneously, the reason that the free spirit is engaged in a constant revision of Becoming with ambiguity.
Strangely enough, the ambiguity reveals our capacity freedom. “Nietzsche is claiming that we are to engage in cultivating drives, and he suggests that the drive we are to cultivate are our own drives. He is also clear that knowing about our freedom to cultivate really does matter significantly to be able to exercise our drive-cultivation freedom.” (page 91)
The free spirit can not only grasp the ambiguity but can leverage it in various ways toward freedom and self-discovery. “Seed-drives include emotions such as anger, pity and vanity, and they include musing or thought. Nietzsche mentions six specific methods of cultivating drives in D [Daybreak, 1881]: (i) avoiding drive-gratification opportunities; (ii) ‘planting regularity into the drive; (iii) generating supersatiation and disgust;’ (iv) using as association of an agonizing thought; (v) redirecting one’s energy resources to a distracting end; (vi) and general exhaustion (D 209).” (page 101)
Another aspect of becoming a free spirit is to understand that this ambiguity gives rise to some “necessary errors” in human expression. Our “knowledge” is often simply invented, projected, and accepted because otherwise we would have no basis for a reasoned existence. “Nietzsche argues that there is an irresolvable conflict between reality and the presuppositions of conscious thought. Because conscious thought is only possible on the basis of certain presuppositions, such as identity, stability over time and individuation. These categories form the necessary basis for knowledge, yet they are all errors because they falsify the truth of things: the reality of absolute flux or Becoming.” (page 116)
“…those fundamental errors are not just necessary conditions for conscious thought but also necessary conditions for life. The underlying thesis is that consciousness is but an organ of the organism, and our organs, being life-enabling, can only interpret reality in a way that opposes the absolute flux of Becoming with a counter-world of durable beings. Thus, the conflict between reality or truth and thought, now becomes a conflict between truth and life. The errors of thought (Being, opposition) are not just thought-enabling, but also life-enabling, so that to negate or eliminate them would be to eliminate or destroy life - our life.
“As free spirits, we need to find a way to confront the necessary error or untruth that is our existential condition as knowers. But we need to confront it in a way that enables us to love it, to enjoy it, to celebrate it as the condition for our devotion to truth as knowers.” (page 117) In other words, free spirits accept the fundamental ignorance and illusions of being human and actually take delight in our errors as we discover who we really are.
Nietzsche often used the analogy of “dance” in various ways throughout his works to indicate a style of being. Free spirits are probably dancers but more than that, they express the light heart of laughter. “…laughter as such (or rather a very specific form of laughter) is presented from the very beginning of GS [The Gay Science, 1882] as what enables us to attain a different perspective from which to search, find, understand and also express ‘truth’, ‘Laughter’ represents a different form of knowledge and a different form of truth. Indeed, if it were not because laughter offers us a new perspective from which to search and produce knowledge, if it were not because Nietzsche had ‘good reasons’ for introducing ‘laughter’ into the process of science itself: how else could he ever convince us to overcome what he calls ‘the prejudice of science in order ‘to take things seriously’ and think well, we need to be in a bad mood, a state of irremediable seriousness (cf. GS 327).” (pp. 127 – 128)
As I have implied, enough though Nietzsche never gives a hard, fast definition of what a “free spirit” it, he does reveal many of the characteristics of such Being. Such humans are skeptical, hold on to no fixed meaning, constantly open to revision, self-critical and self-liberating, and constantly experimenting with their drives. In fact, such experimentation is a healthy sign.
“First, we need to cultivate the habits of skepticism and the suspicion of anything that smacks of dogma. This will require learning to do without the need for certainties. Further, it will involve actively engaging in exploration and experiments in knowledge that do not have any set limits…one must loosen one’s attachments to any horizon of meaning, and with this to any fixed boundary to one’s sense of self. The free spirit makes this their way of life, establishing these new habits and values as part of themselves, where previously the errors or fixed ‘truths’ have been the basis for our existence.” (page 143)
“Free spirits will be those who have a strong enough will to truth and taste for freedom to break the habits of metaphysical need and who will become freer spirits through this process of emancipation from fixed truths…Nietzsche describes the free spirit as someone who has the ‘rare and preeminent distinction, especially if continued into old age, of being able to alter his opinions!’ (D 56).” (page 145)
“Nietzsche considers holding fast to fixed beliefs to show a lack of ‘intellectual conscience’, which is a failure to ask ourselves why we take certain things to be right or true. Nietzsche urges on the knowledge seekers who rub out our existing horizons and venture into the horizon of the infinite, not knowing where knowledge will lead them and not circumventing it within a field that is compatible with accepted morality and certainties.” (page 146)
…’great health, that superfluity which grants the free spirit the dangerous privilege of living experimentally and of being allowed to offer itself to adventure: the master’s privilege of the free spirit!’ (HH I Preface 4). So the free spirit takes the risk of destroying its own horizons and boundaries so that it might create new ones.” (page 149)
“The free spirit can thereby ‘maintain the drives as the foundation of all knowing’…They live in the drives in order to understand them, and this understanding allows them to better resist the tendency of these drives to try and establish themselves as dominant and absolute, at the cost of more open horizons. The free spirit explores horizons, and being able to do without the belief that any are absolute and certain.” (page 153)
As an expression of their freedom, free spirits tend to either be solitary or require periods of solitude while being free in the negative sense of freedom from things. “One form of such independence that Nietzsche repeatedly emphasizes is independence of freedom from association: solitude, being able to withstand a lack of human companionship. Time and again, solitude is described in a sense that suggests that at least one of the ways Nietzsche conceives it is in terms of being free from the demands of others, being free from obligations, associations, and their influences.” (page 190)
Nietzsche emphasizes the need to choose ones attachments carefully, while controlling them to the extent of not becoming “stuck” with them – no doubt a difficult thing for any us. “Free spirits are not simply negatively free; they do not lack forms of attachment. Rather, the key point is that they avoid remaining stuck to such bonds – even, as Nietzsche writes, to their notion of themselves as being detached. So, it is critically important to understand this key distinction and the advantage Nietzsche thinks it affords. Attachments in themselves are not the problem; remaining stuck in any one or particular set of attachments is what Nietzsche finds so limiting.” (pp. 197 – 198)
By not becoming “stuck” we are liberated to become creative and explore the full range of drives each of us possesses. “The free spirit, on the other hand, becomes an expansive multiplicity of drives, and this potentially creates and nourishes more contenders for dominance in the soul. The free spirit, perhaps more than any type among Nietzsche’s figures, faces certain risks, including a lack of order that would diminish rather than strengthen it. The challenge of the free spirit is to actively recruit the drives and their cooperation so that it can be free in another respect, namely, free from certain kinds of disabling conflicts among the drives as well as freely enabled and fit enough to realize the kind of activity described above.” (page 200)
It is important to understand what the fundamental motivation was for Nietzsche to develop his theory of being a free spirit. Largely, it was reaction to many aspects of modernity, specifically the early capitalist and consumer influences as robbing us of our opportunity to do the contemplative work necessary to become a free spirit.
“Nietzsche laments the absence from modern life if leisure and idleness: ‘One no longer has time or energy’, he writes, ‘for ceremonies, for being obliging in an indirect way, for spirit in conversation, and for any otium at all’, since ‘living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion (GS 329). In the face of all this activity, Nietzsche calls for a return to the vita contemplativa.” (page 210)
Ultimately, however, Nietzsche’s practice of constant openness to the ambiguity gave way to a change in his thinking about free spirits. His later works reflect how his celebration of skepticism and laughter is transformed into the need to becoming something more than a free spirit, or at the very least to not become “stuck” in the idea of the free spirit. In his later work, Nietzsche’s self-critique and revision is one of the strongest aspects of his philosophy and serve also to guide us on how to remain unfixed about anything as we practice the art of Becoming.
“Simply put, those among his readers who identify themselves as free spirits are mistaken about their achievement…they are, in fact, the ‘last idealists’ whom Nietzsche describes in essay 3 of On the Genealogy of Morality. Through no fault of their own, these ‘last idealists’ are not, and never will be, the free spirits he has emboldened them to become. They are nevertheless valuable to him. Provided he can persuade them to affirm the non-negotiable limitations that attend their rank and station. His bold renunciation of the free spirit ideal in the new preface to HH thus serves as an unsubtle prompt to his best readers that the time has come for them to follow his lead.” (page 237)
“Despite their many virtues and attributes, however, these ‘last idealists’ are blind to an essential, non-negotiable feature of their identity…Like his best readers these ‘last idealists’ are in need of an insight that Nietzsche himself possesses and wishes to share. To wit: ‘They are far from being free spirits: for they still have faith in truth.’ (GM III 24).” (page 239)
“…the ‘last idealists’ among his best readers have outgrown the deal of the free spirit and can no longer afford the luxury of clinging to it. For Nietzsche and his readers, that is, the healing fiction of the free spirit, whether conceived as a sympathetic companion or an ideal of self-cultivation, has exhausted its usefulness…these ‘last idealists’ are in fact seekers of the truth, and above all else seekers of the truth about themselves. As such, they are no longer entitled to consider themselves free spirits. Continuing to do so, Nietzsche wishes them to understand, is now beneath them.” (pp. 242 – 243)
Comparatively, Nietzsche's late works make little reference to the "free spirit." Having mastered being a free spirit, one must ultimately transcend herself or himself. Here, of course, his philosophy becomes more complicated and the light openness of the free spirit becomes something heavier, something perhaps less appealing but nevertheless essential. It is one thing to master your drives and dance around unfixed by traditional restraints upon human behavior. It is another to discover what comes next in the lives of such human beings, not only beyond good and evil but beyond the idea of “truth” itself, the ultimate freedom.
Importantly, Nietzsche does not offer any specific advice in this regard. He merely states that, having learned the tools of the trade where being a free spirit is concerned, each person needs to find their own, unique way forward. We are now beyond clusters of Being, friends, family, tribes, and associations of any kind.
“Now that belief in the God of Christianity ‘is becoming more and more unbelievable (GM III 24), it is possible for the first time to inquire after the value of truth itself. If we wish to continue the progress marked by our renunciation of belief in the Christian God, that is, we will need to interrogate our allegiance to the successor deity.” (page 246)
“If they are to join him in making the will to truth conscious of itself as a problem, or so he apparently believes, they must arrive on their own at the insight that he only recently acquired for himself…the belief that he was a ‘free spirit’, in the salutary company of other ‘free spirits’, may have been decisive for his convalescence, but it was inimical to the resurgence of his health. Having disabused himself of this belief, he now encourages his best readers to do likewise. If they are to succeed in their assault on the ascetic ideal, they will need to avail themselves of the full destructive power of their residual idealism.” (page 248)
In the scope of his entire body of work, Nietzsche’s free spirit is a necessary stage to discover and master the psychic and emotional tools essential for living beyond idealism (‘the last idealists’). While the creative and light-hearted aspects of the practicing free spirit are among the most attractive qualities of Nietzsche’s work, the transcendental nature of this “phase” in personal development, as seen in his mature philosophy, is somewhat more disquieting in its evasive ambiguity. Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy is an excellent guide to this wide spectrum in his intimate philosophical journey. Being is easier than Becoming and there is no better example of that than in the free spirit itself.
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