Part Three of three.
“Insofar as the individual is seeking happiness, one ought not to tender him any prescriptions as to the path to happiness: for individual happiness springs from one’s own unknown laws, and prescriptions from without can only obstruct and hinder it." (Daybreak 108)
Nietzsche intentionally does not prescribe any specific methods or techniques for discovering or mastering the multiplicity of drives and affects. This may seem as though he has not thought things through very well. There is little in the way of practical advice in his psychology. But Nietzsche’s truth claim is merely to understand the mechanics of the multiplicity in all its many facets. How to master the mechanics and be a well-ordered soul is not specifically told because it can’t be. Unlike virtually any other “wise” teacher you will encounter, Nietzsche understands that the multiplicity is almost infinitely varied and will manifest differently for everyone. For that reason, he can only reveal the mechanics, it is up to each of us to figure out how to master them.
There are some general guidelines, however. Revaluation of everything to ensure that one’s life is life-affirming rather than life-negating is a specific principle. Observe your affects. Something that makes your life alluring and inspiring is life-affirming. Something that makes your life miserable and apathetic is life-negating. A well-ordered soul will maximize the former while minimizing the latter through the careful cooperation and/or dominance of drives and affects. Again, it is critical to remember that this is not intended to achieve inner peace or salvation or nirvana or whatever. To Nietzsche those are all examples of decadence, decay of the soul and of culture.
They are illusions, children's stories, distractions that keep a person’s focus away from “something greater” in life. Nietzsche thought “higher” persons should be “true to the Earth,” that there is nothing “greater” to turn to beyond the daily living of life itself. Rather, the purpose of life, the actual meaning of a modern life, is to create values and to seek and overcome resistances, to overcome yourself and/or external obstacles over and over in a constant state of becoming. At that point, you have attained the “style” of “the great artist.” That, in a nutshell, is what Nietzsche is all about.
Nietzsche’s favorite example of life-negating values is traditional human morality. Reginster writes: “Moral values are harmful to life by design, because they are motivated by hostility to it. It is no surprise, therefore, if the pursuit of a world in which there is no struggle or contradiction, or in which there is no change or becoming, should involve adopting values that are harmful to life. In other words, it is precisely because they underwrite a condemnation of life that compliance with moral values is also harmful to it.” (page 47)
Thiele points out the fundamental problem with morality is that it freezes all values in time and chokes out the very possibility of becoming. “The need for fixed values is a symptom of weakness and decline. Nietzsche used his perspectivism, contradictions and all, to expose the plurality of values, and to cast aspirations at any who might attack his philosophical position as self-refuting.” (page 90) With values frozen, the creative aspect of living is (decadently) negated.
By contrast, life-affirming values allow for the diverse exploration and continuous refinement of living, which, in terms of Nietzsche’s psychology is far preferable to fixed morality and other cultural values. Vitality, calm, decisiveness, joy, confidence, novelty, frivolity, and commitment are all examples of life-affirming qualities. A person who has mastered their drives and affects can allow the (commanded) drives themselves fullest autonomy. Nietzsche values individual autonomy (becoming) above any cultural tradition (being). Psychologically, it is preferable to develop this autonomy (freedom) and encourage this evolution (rather than fixation) of life-affirming values.
Parkes: “In view of Nietzsche’s contrasting emphasis on ‘becoming’ over ‘being’…he could hardly advocate a single drive’s remaining in charge indefinitely…[his notes] suggest a model in which a succession of drives, each of which would in principle be capable of ‘philosophizing,’ cycle through the highest office in accordance with the experiential context and the individual’s stage of development.” (page 356)
Katsafanas: “...the self is defined by its values. These values are largely determined by the agent's drives and social context. However, Nietzsche distinguishes the true or genuine self from the ordinary person. The defining feature of the true self is some form of independence in valuing. Rather than passively accepting the values of her society, the genuine self somehow determines their own values.” (page 220)
“Nietzsche does seem to associate freedom with unity, self-overcoming, self-satisfaction, power, self-determination, being authentic, being who you are, revaluation, self-understanding, and loving fate. In fact, it's only a bit of an exaggeration to say that everything that Nietzsche regards positively is, at one point or another, associated with freedom; at times, freedom seems to be functioning as nothing more than an honorific bestowed on all of Nietzsche's favored states.” (pp. 220-221)
“…and agent is autonomous if she acts on values that have been 'revaluated' or critically assessed, this critical assessment is conducted in terms of will to power; so, an agent is autonomous if she acts on values that are consistent with – but not derived from – will to power. This is what Nietzsche intends when he claims that freedom should be understood in terms of will to power.” (pp. 246-247)
It is through the encouragement of such individual autonomy of drives and affects (creating values) that a different society can emerge. Parkes: “This aspiration of Nietzsche’s to a higher culture stemming from disciplined drives is central to this thinking – though generally overlooked by his detractors. The softer Nietzsche enthusiasts have done him a disservice in this respect, by ignoring the Appollonian disciple he thinks necessary for acquiring the suppleness and strength required for the true dance. Higher culture demands a variety of drives be cultivated, but there must after all be some measure, some order imposed upon them.” (page 280)
The rich variety of life-affirming drives and affects inherently creates a society far different from one fixated on “eternal truths” and social controls via life-negating values of “sin,” “guilt,” “samsara”, “bad karma”, etc. Instead of dealing with the possibilities of punishment or bad conscience or inauthentic living by codes created by others, life is your adventure. You value it on your terms. You experiment, welcome failure as learning, welcome success as overcoming resistances, you constantly become who you are.
A collection of such individuals, working in tandem, form the psychological basis to break the bonds of tradition and share in a community of perpetual explorers. Admittedly, this is a bit romantic and idealistic, but it is important to realize that Nietzsche thought the assemblage of “higher” persons would lead to “higher” culture – something beyond the religious, democratic, and/or socialistic models for society.
But, while it is important to keep in mind, I don’t want to overplay the cultural facet of Nietzsche’s psychology. As I said, this is perhaps the most “idealistic” aspect of his thinking. There is no shortage of “gurus” who think the world would be a much better place if everyone simply followed their take on what’s wrong with the society. The important point here is that, psychologically speaking, it is best that a variety of life-affirming drives and affects be nurtured once self-mastery becomes possible. This inevitably means that resistances, both personal and cultural, must be overcome. And here is where the fullness of life is possible, through a perpetual state of becoming.
Reginster writes: “Insofar as this sort of happiness is experienced in the activity of confronting and overcoming resistance, it will never be a state that is reached once and for all. For so soon as the resistance is actually overcome, the activity comes to an end, and so does the happiness it creates. Impermanence, or ‘becoming,’ is therefore an essential feature of Nietzsche’s ‘new happiness.’” (page 196)
“One cannot express the value of becoming by wishing its eternity, for one cannot coherently wish the permanence of what essentially involves change. One can, by contrast, coherently wish the eternal recurrence of becoming…And if we ask what sort of value could underwrite a revaluation of becoming, Nietzsche offers his ethics of power. For becoming is an essential feature of the will to power, a paradigmatic manifestation of which is creative activity…” (page 226)
Self-mastery involves total understanding and uncompromising acceptance of yourself. Of who you become. “…I come to regard my life as perfect, as leaving nothing to be desired. This is a demanding ideal, which is presumably achieved only rarely. But it is achievable in the first place only if I hold no life-negating values, for if my life were assessed by the light of such values, it would necessarily leave something to be desired. This is why revaluation of these values is a condition of the very possibility of the affirmation of life.” (page 227)
“To live a creative life is precisely to seek out resistance to overcome, and it is therefore to seek out suffering.” (page 243) Once more, the fullest life is not one that seeks inner peace or any “great goal” of living. It is rather far more dynamic than that. The fullest life is the life that seeks to express itself by overcoming whatever difficulties or obstacles it encounters along the way, psychologically or sociologically. “It is not that existing things are not good, and could be improved upon, but it is rather that our will to power insatiably impels us to move on to further creative opportunities. The focus on the future is thus less an expectation of progress or of a coming golden age than an affirmation of becoming itself.” (page 245)
Up to now, I have noted that Nietzsche’s psychology is driven by drives and affects and that your existence and mine is nothing more than our unique collection of drives and affects. But this is not adequate for the full resolution of Nietzsche’s psychology. While it is true that you and I are multiplicities, “higher” persons become something more than that. They become autonomous selves despite of the dynamics of the drives and affects.
Janaway: “If the drives and affects are all there is to the self, and the self is to do anything called ‘knowing’, then drives and affects must be capable of representing something outside themselves…[Nietzsche] thinks of will to power as expressing itself toward resistances, and illustrates the process with the model of the protoplasm sending out pseudopodia and feeling around for something it might assimilate into itself. A sub-personal drive likewise comes up against something other than itself, which it feels as a resistance to its own activity. It either overcomes the resistance or is overcome by it, giving rise to affects of (roughly) gratification, frustration, exhaustion, or reinvigoration – feelings of increase or diminution in power.” (page 217)
“…Nietzsche’s revaluative project is conceived as a task for a self-conscious and potentially autonomous subject to carry out; it seems to view his suggestion of ‘having one’s affects within one’s control’ and manipulating them ‘in accordance with a higher goal’ as part of that same overall project. In using the fullness of our affective responsiveness to the world, we come to occupy ourselves, as it were, in a more complete and healthy way, to fulfill our potential as cognizers. But if the way in which we are to reach this healthier cognitive state is by rethinking what we are and by conscious identification with as many of our affects as possible, we must arguably be unified self-conscious subjects, subjects of ‘I’-thoughts. So we cannot simply be a multiplicity of drives and affects, as Nietzsche’s official position proclaims.” (page 219)
Revaluation is possible because we are more than the multiplicity. We are that which understands and orchestrates our life, a work of art actively expressing self values. “…in support of the view that our interpretations are saturated and constituted by a plurality of feelings he dissolves the self into a multiplicity of affects and drives. But his aims of improving our capacity for knowing and skillfully using our affects demand more of a self than that: he needs his enquirer to be an active and sufficiently unified self that can represent its subject matter truly, that rides on top of the inner multiplicity, and that can self-consciously adopt attitudes towards it.” (page 222)
“Enquirers who idealize truth and subordinate their lives to it are the sole contemporary guardians of ‘intellectual conscience’ (GM III. 24) and Nietzsche is one of them, but what distinguishes him is the realization that their form of enquiry must undermine itself: ‘what meaning would our entire being have if not this, that in us this will to truth has come to a consciousness of itself as a problem? (GM III. 27).” (page 237)
So, higher persons are capable of self-conscious inquiry with regards to the multiplicity. This is developed, as mentioned earlier, through self-observation and by freeing oneself from the bonds of cultural restraints, by being life-affirming agents of becoming. As Katsafanas puts it: “...the Nietzschean self might be the person who, rather than passively accepting the values of her society, instead fashions her own values, and fashions them in a way that constitutes affirmation rather than negation.” (page 209)
A life of affirmation leads to Nietzsche’s “greatness”: “...Nietzsche's great individuals aren't those who have extensive impacts on society. Rather, they are those who have extensive impacts with particular, life-affirmative contents and through a particular method: promotion of the new values.” (page 208) Nietzsche referred to this sort of living as creative and artistic (as in the art of living) and giving oneself “style.”
He wrote in The Gay Science (1882): “One thing is needful. - To ‘give style' to one’s character – a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses that their nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye…It will be the strong and domineering nature who experience their pleasure under their own law; the passion of their tremendous will become less intense in the face of all stylized nature, all conquered and serving nature; even when they have palaces to build and gardens to design, they resist giving nature free rein. Conversely, it is the weak character with no power over themselves who hate the constraint of style; they feel that is this bitterly evil compulsion were to be imposed on them, they would become commonplace under it – they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such minds – and they may be of the first rank – are always out to shape or interpret their environment as free nature – wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising – and they are well advised to do so, because only thus do they please themselves! For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself – be it through this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold!” (GS 290)
Importantly, Nietzsche equates psychological style to art, to being an artist, to living a creative life. Katsafanas : “...Nietzsche praises some forms of unity between drives, aspects of one's character, or, more generally, the activities composing one's life. GS 290 is illustrative: there, Nietzsche valorizes those who practice the 'great and rare art' of 'giv[ing] style to one's character' by reshaping themselves in light of some 'artistic plan.'” (page 202)
Within Nietzsche’s psychology, giving oneself style means putting everything we have previously discussed together. You know your drives and affects. You know the dynamics of how they dominate and cooperate. You are observant of their subversive mechanics. You command or orchestrate your multiplicity in a creative unity of life-affirmation that inherently entails a (modern) revaluation of accepted values as the essence of a never-ending path of becoming, the overcoming of personal and societal resistances to achieve greatness.
Thiele offers a clear explanation of what style entails within Nietzsche’s psychology: “The creation of unity out of diversity is given the name ‘style.’ Style is the coordinated exploitation of powerful instincts. It is impossible for those whose passions are too weak or those who are incapable of harnessing strong passions. Stimulation and sublimation rather than extirpation or anaesthetization of the passions is its precondition. Grand style, as demonstrated by classicism, is the effect achieved through the harnessing of violent and varied passions, and their placement under the rule of a predominant drive. Only great passion can produce a great work.” (page 63)
“Man, like all forms of life, is in a constant state of becoming. There is no stability, only ascent or decline. To ascend is to overcome decadence through strength. Lack of growth is just another term for weakness…there are only souls being put into order and souls falling into disorder…For the soul, as for society, the aim is not so much the establishment of order as the act of establishing order.” (page 91)
“Style is that art of life which begets greatness. Those who do not live as an attempt to make of their life a work of art cannot understand why learned technique may not replace passion and spiritual strength. To achieve style one must first have the power to order one’s multiple soul, to give it leadership.” (page 132)
“Greatness, then, is always the product of the disciplined stimulation of strong drives. Only those with a heroic disposition will burden themselves with the task of realizing these ideals within themselves. And only the philosopher, artist, and saint, Nietzsche declared, are ‘no longer animal.’[…] Man has a multiple soul. Unlike the lower animals, he is a battleground of warring instincts. Participation in the conflictual politics of the soul is the dictate of higher morality – the mark of heroic individualism. But this imperative of self-development does not contradict Nietzsche’s tenet of innate determination. Growth is nothing but the rearrangement of drives, a change of political regime.” (page 209)
“The self is not so much created as unfolded…As the individual ‘creates’ himself over time, facet after facet of the preexisting self is revealed. Yet the self is never completely discovered. Its unfolding is as the paring of an infinitely large onion.” (page 215)
According to Parkes, if self-mastery is attained, this will ultimately impact the flux of the multiplicity and allow for a certain relaxation of your self-discipline. Attaining your style translates into a relaxation of self-discipline and experiencing the natural “flow” of your multiplicity: “The will’s ‘power of mastery’ becomes such that it is now safe to ‘give back to the drives their freedom,’ in the confidence that they will now ‘go where our best inclines.’ By the end of this second phase, in which ‘the entire affective system is stimulated and intensified,’ one is able to act with total spontaneity – strangely but knowingly ‘unable not to react’ – moved now by the mysterious power of Dionysus (TI 9.10).
“One can fully channel the power of the ‘negative’ drives only when one has the courage to relax the harsh discipline to which they have long been subjected, allowing their massive energies to flow again through the ‘great economy’ of the soul. This is a dangerous undertaking which conduces to a kind of freedom of which only the greater human beings are capable.” (pp. 357 – 358)
Here’s another characteristic of drives. They have power. To come full circle, the multiplicity possesses a power drive that basically is the engine for all the other drives. In most people the power drive is mundane, not especially passionate. But in higher persons, according to Nietzsche, it is intense. This is basic “evolutionary theory of the will to power.” A true master of the multiplicity masters the largest number and diversity of drives. Even life-negating drives have power. The master of the multiplicity, rich in passions and contradictions, finds power in even the drives and affects that would otherwise cause trouble. Even more, the master channels it with all the life-affirming powers into the creative act of becoming.
There you have it. Happiness is not the goal of Nietzsche’s psychology. Peace is not the goal. Realization is not the goal. Although, it must be said, there is nothing wrong with happiness, peace, and realization along the way. But they are not ends or even the correct goals of a truly modern psychology. The goal, the end, is to discover and overcome challenges and resistances.
There are some obvious deficiencies in Nietzsche psychology. First of all, it is elitist. It is intended for his romantic era idea of a “higher” person, someone with great passion and intensity. Most people will be victims of their drives for all their lives. They are not especially passionate or intense and are incapable of dealing with their drives. They keep making the same mistakes, keep harming themselves and others in the same manner, and so forth. So it isn’t a very practical psychology for the mass of humanity, although recognizing the multiplicity, by itself, is probably helpful to most people.
Also, it is a harsh, Prussian-like psychology. You must bear the weight of life, wage "war" upon life. You must overcome every struggle and obstacle to achieve your ends. That has a tinge of militarism in it, which is partly the reason Nietzsche appeals to fascist type persons. Actually, this is all potentially very helpful because life is suffering, after all. So if you are going to suffer you might as well create and command things. But, nevertheless, Nietzsche’s immersion in Prussian culture affects his psychology in ways that limit the universality of some of it.
More than anything, Nietzsche’s psychology suffers from the fact that there is no interpersonal dimension to it. There is the multiplicity and there is the culture and society in which the multiplicity expresses itself among other multiplicities. But Nietzsche never explores or analyzes how his psychology relates to two or more multiplicities trying to live with each other. This is probably reflective of the fact that, but for his college student days and up through the time of his “affair” with Lou Salome, Nietzsche was pretty much a hermit, particularly late in life. He did not relate to others directly so much as correspond with others. Psychologically, Nietzsche had nothing to say about how to resolve an argument as a couple, how to nurture relationships, or how to value your friends. How to “win friends and influence people” was not Nietzsche’s suit. This is the most glaring weakness of his psychology.
Nevertheless, challenging yourself to either work on yourself or to project your dominant drives into the world, to constantly adapt to the flux and to channel all your inner energies, positive or negative, into whatever comes next, all this lies at the core of his psychology. That seems to have vast mental health value to those who are capable of it.
To repeat, Nietzsche’s psychology is not about the realization of anything. It is a behavioral, self-observing mode of existence, where resistances are sought out and creatively overcome. Only in those moments, moments often of creating new values, do we reach our fullest potential, achieving our style – of becoming. Only in those moments do you “become who you are.” Style is the existential essence of Nietzsche’s psychology and, also, the end result of Nietzsche’s philosophy from the “I am dancing on the edge of the abyss” perspective. If you disregard all the rest of Nietzsche's philosophy and hold only on to this, it can be sufficient.
“…those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses that their nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye…” (from GS 290, additional book five published in 1887)
“Insofar as the individual is seeking happiness, one ought not to tender him any prescriptions as to the path to happiness: for individual happiness springs from one’s own unknown laws, and prescriptions from without can only obstruct and hinder it." (Daybreak 108)
Nietzsche intentionally does not prescribe any specific methods or techniques for discovering or mastering the multiplicity of drives and affects. This may seem as though he has not thought things through very well. There is little in the way of practical advice in his psychology. But Nietzsche’s truth claim is merely to understand the mechanics of the multiplicity in all its many facets. How to master the mechanics and be a well-ordered soul is not specifically told because it can’t be. Unlike virtually any other “wise” teacher you will encounter, Nietzsche understands that the multiplicity is almost infinitely varied and will manifest differently for everyone. For that reason, he can only reveal the mechanics, it is up to each of us to figure out how to master them.
There are some general guidelines, however. Revaluation of everything to ensure that one’s life is life-affirming rather than life-negating is a specific principle. Observe your affects. Something that makes your life alluring and inspiring is life-affirming. Something that makes your life miserable and apathetic is life-negating. A well-ordered soul will maximize the former while minimizing the latter through the careful cooperation and/or dominance of drives and affects. Again, it is critical to remember that this is not intended to achieve inner peace or salvation or nirvana or whatever. To Nietzsche those are all examples of decadence, decay of the soul and of culture.
They are illusions, children's stories, distractions that keep a person’s focus away from “something greater” in life. Nietzsche thought “higher” persons should be “true to the Earth,” that there is nothing “greater” to turn to beyond the daily living of life itself. Rather, the purpose of life, the actual meaning of a modern life, is to create values and to seek and overcome resistances, to overcome yourself and/or external obstacles over and over in a constant state of becoming. At that point, you have attained the “style” of “the great artist.” That, in a nutshell, is what Nietzsche is all about.
Nietzsche’s favorite example of life-negating values is traditional human morality. Reginster writes: “Moral values are harmful to life by design, because they are motivated by hostility to it. It is no surprise, therefore, if the pursuit of a world in which there is no struggle or contradiction, or in which there is no change or becoming, should involve adopting values that are harmful to life. In other words, it is precisely because they underwrite a condemnation of life that compliance with moral values is also harmful to it.” (page 47)
Thiele points out the fundamental problem with morality is that it freezes all values in time and chokes out the very possibility of becoming. “The need for fixed values is a symptom of weakness and decline. Nietzsche used his perspectivism, contradictions and all, to expose the plurality of values, and to cast aspirations at any who might attack his philosophical position as self-refuting.” (page 90) With values frozen, the creative aspect of living is (decadently) negated.
By contrast, life-affirming values allow for the diverse exploration and continuous refinement of living, which, in terms of Nietzsche’s psychology is far preferable to fixed morality and other cultural values. Vitality, calm, decisiveness, joy, confidence, novelty, frivolity, and commitment are all examples of life-affirming qualities. A person who has mastered their drives and affects can allow the (commanded) drives themselves fullest autonomy. Nietzsche values individual autonomy (becoming) above any cultural tradition (being). Psychologically, it is preferable to develop this autonomy (freedom) and encourage this evolution (rather than fixation) of life-affirming values.
Parkes: “In view of Nietzsche’s contrasting emphasis on ‘becoming’ over ‘being’…he could hardly advocate a single drive’s remaining in charge indefinitely…[his notes] suggest a model in which a succession of drives, each of which would in principle be capable of ‘philosophizing,’ cycle through the highest office in accordance with the experiential context and the individual’s stage of development.” (page 356)
Katsafanas: “...the self is defined by its values. These values are largely determined by the agent's drives and social context. However, Nietzsche distinguishes the true or genuine self from the ordinary person. The defining feature of the true self is some form of independence in valuing. Rather than passively accepting the values of her society, the genuine self somehow determines their own values.” (page 220)
“Nietzsche does seem to associate freedom with unity, self-overcoming, self-satisfaction, power, self-determination, being authentic, being who you are, revaluation, self-understanding, and loving fate. In fact, it's only a bit of an exaggeration to say that everything that Nietzsche regards positively is, at one point or another, associated with freedom; at times, freedom seems to be functioning as nothing more than an honorific bestowed on all of Nietzsche's favored states.” (pp. 220-221)
“…and agent is autonomous if she acts on values that have been 'revaluated' or critically assessed, this critical assessment is conducted in terms of will to power; so, an agent is autonomous if she acts on values that are consistent with – but not derived from – will to power. This is what Nietzsche intends when he claims that freedom should be understood in terms of will to power.” (pp. 246-247)
It is through the encouragement of such individual autonomy of drives and affects (creating values) that a different society can emerge. Parkes: “This aspiration of Nietzsche’s to a higher culture stemming from disciplined drives is central to this thinking – though generally overlooked by his detractors. The softer Nietzsche enthusiasts have done him a disservice in this respect, by ignoring the Appollonian disciple he thinks necessary for acquiring the suppleness and strength required for the true dance. Higher culture demands a variety of drives be cultivated, but there must after all be some measure, some order imposed upon them.” (page 280)
The rich variety of life-affirming drives and affects inherently creates a society far different from one fixated on “eternal truths” and social controls via life-negating values of “sin,” “guilt,” “samsara”, “bad karma”, etc. Instead of dealing with the possibilities of punishment or bad conscience or inauthentic living by codes created by others, life is your adventure. You value it on your terms. You experiment, welcome failure as learning, welcome success as overcoming resistances, you constantly become who you are.
A collection of such individuals, working in tandem, form the psychological basis to break the bonds of tradition and share in a community of perpetual explorers. Admittedly, this is a bit romantic and idealistic, but it is important to realize that Nietzsche thought the assemblage of “higher” persons would lead to “higher” culture – something beyond the religious, democratic, and/or socialistic models for society.
But, while it is important to keep in mind, I don’t want to overplay the cultural facet of Nietzsche’s psychology. As I said, this is perhaps the most “idealistic” aspect of his thinking. There is no shortage of “gurus” who think the world would be a much better place if everyone simply followed their take on what’s wrong with the society. The important point here is that, psychologically speaking, it is best that a variety of life-affirming drives and affects be nurtured once self-mastery becomes possible. This inevitably means that resistances, both personal and cultural, must be overcome. And here is where the fullness of life is possible, through a perpetual state of becoming.
Reginster writes: “Insofar as this sort of happiness is experienced in the activity of confronting and overcoming resistance, it will never be a state that is reached once and for all. For so soon as the resistance is actually overcome, the activity comes to an end, and so does the happiness it creates. Impermanence, or ‘becoming,’ is therefore an essential feature of Nietzsche’s ‘new happiness.’” (page 196)
“One cannot express the value of becoming by wishing its eternity, for one cannot coherently wish the permanence of what essentially involves change. One can, by contrast, coherently wish the eternal recurrence of becoming…And if we ask what sort of value could underwrite a revaluation of becoming, Nietzsche offers his ethics of power. For becoming is an essential feature of the will to power, a paradigmatic manifestation of which is creative activity…” (page 226)
Self-mastery involves total understanding and uncompromising acceptance of yourself. Of who you become. “…I come to regard my life as perfect, as leaving nothing to be desired. This is a demanding ideal, which is presumably achieved only rarely. But it is achievable in the first place only if I hold no life-negating values, for if my life were assessed by the light of such values, it would necessarily leave something to be desired. This is why revaluation of these values is a condition of the very possibility of the affirmation of life.” (page 227)
“To live a creative life is precisely to seek out resistance to overcome, and it is therefore to seek out suffering.” (page 243) Once more, the fullest life is not one that seeks inner peace or any “great goal” of living. It is rather far more dynamic than that. The fullest life is the life that seeks to express itself by overcoming whatever difficulties or obstacles it encounters along the way, psychologically or sociologically. “It is not that existing things are not good, and could be improved upon, but it is rather that our will to power insatiably impels us to move on to further creative opportunities. The focus on the future is thus less an expectation of progress or of a coming golden age than an affirmation of becoming itself.” (page 245)
Up to now, I have noted that Nietzsche’s psychology is driven by drives and affects and that your existence and mine is nothing more than our unique collection of drives and affects. But this is not adequate for the full resolution of Nietzsche’s psychology. While it is true that you and I are multiplicities, “higher” persons become something more than that. They become autonomous selves despite of the dynamics of the drives and affects.
Janaway: “If the drives and affects are all there is to the self, and the self is to do anything called ‘knowing’, then drives and affects must be capable of representing something outside themselves…[Nietzsche] thinks of will to power as expressing itself toward resistances, and illustrates the process with the model of the protoplasm sending out pseudopodia and feeling around for something it might assimilate into itself. A sub-personal drive likewise comes up against something other than itself, which it feels as a resistance to its own activity. It either overcomes the resistance or is overcome by it, giving rise to affects of (roughly) gratification, frustration, exhaustion, or reinvigoration – feelings of increase or diminution in power.” (page 217)
“…Nietzsche’s revaluative project is conceived as a task for a self-conscious and potentially autonomous subject to carry out; it seems to view his suggestion of ‘having one’s affects within one’s control’ and manipulating them ‘in accordance with a higher goal’ as part of that same overall project. In using the fullness of our affective responsiveness to the world, we come to occupy ourselves, as it were, in a more complete and healthy way, to fulfill our potential as cognizers. But if the way in which we are to reach this healthier cognitive state is by rethinking what we are and by conscious identification with as many of our affects as possible, we must arguably be unified self-conscious subjects, subjects of ‘I’-thoughts. So we cannot simply be a multiplicity of drives and affects, as Nietzsche’s official position proclaims.” (page 219)
Revaluation is possible because we are more than the multiplicity. We are that which understands and orchestrates our life, a work of art actively expressing self values. “…in support of the view that our interpretations are saturated and constituted by a plurality of feelings he dissolves the self into a multiplicity of affects and drives. But his aims of improving our capacity for knowing and skillfully using our affects demand more of a self than that: he needs his enquirer to be an active and sufficiently unified self that can represent its subject matter truly, that rides on top of the inner multiplicity, and that can self-consciously adopt attitudes towards it.” (page 222)
“Enquirers who idealize truth and subordinate their lives to it are the sole contemporary guardians of ‘intellectual conscience’ (GM III. 24) and Nietzsche is one of them, but what distinguishes him is the realization that their form of enquiry must undermine itself: ‘what meaning would our entire being have if not this, that in us this will to truth has come to a consciousness of itself as a problem? (GM III. 27).” (page 237)
So, higher persons are capable of self-conscious inquiry with regards to the multiplicity. This is developed, as mentioned earlier, through self-observation and by freeing oneself from the bonds of cultural restraints, by being life-affirming agents of becoming. As Katsafanas puts it: “...the Nietzschean self might be the person who, rather than passively accepting the values of her society, instead fashions her own values, and fashions them in a way that constitutes affirmation rather than negation.” (page 209)
A life of affirmation leads to Nietzsche’s “greatness”: “...Nietzsche's great individuals aren't those who have extensive impacts on society. Rather, they are those who have extensive impacts with particular, life-affirmative contents and through a particular method: promotion of the new values.” (page 208) Nietzsche referred to this sort of living as creative and artistic (as in the art of living) and giving oneself “style.”
He wrote in The Gay Science (1882): “One thing is needful. - To ‘give style' to one’s character – a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses that their nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye…It will be the strong and domineering nature who experience their pleasure under their own law; the passion of their tremendous will become less intense in the face of all stylized nature, all conquered and serving nature; even when they have palaces to build and gardens to design, they resist giving nature free rein. Conversely, it is the weak character with no power over themselves who hate the constraint of style; they feel that is this bitterly evil compulsion were to be imposed on them, they would become commonplace under it – they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such minds – and they may be of the first rank – are always out to shape or interpret their environment as free nature – wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising – and they are well advised to do so, because only thus do they please themselves! For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself – be it through this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold!” (GS 290)
Importantly, Nietzsche equates psychological style to art, to being an artist, to living a creative life. Katsafanas : “...Nietzsche praises some forms of unity between drives, aspects of one's character, or, more generally, the activities composing one's life. GS 290 is illustrative: there, Nietzsche valorizes those who practice the 'great and rare art' of 'giv[ing] style to one's character' by reshaping themselves in light of some 'artistic plan.'” (page 202)
Within Nietzsche’s psychology, giving oneself style means putting everything we have previously discussed together. You know your drives and affects. You know the dynamics of how they dominate and cooperate. You are observant of their subversive mechanics. You command or orchestrate your multiplicity in a creative unity of life-affirmation that inherently entails a (modern) revaluation of accepted values as the essence of a never-ending path of becoming, the overcoming of personal and societal resistances to achieve greatness.
Thiele offers a clear explanation of what style entails within Nietzsche’s psychology: “The creation of unity out of diversity is given the name ‘style.’ Style is the coordinated exploitation of powerful instincts. It is impossible for those whose passions are too weak or those who are incapable of harnessing strong passions. Stimulation and sublimation rather than extirpation or anaesthetization of the passions is its precondition. Grand style, as demonstrated by classicism, is the effect achieved through the harnessing of violent and varied passions, and their placement under the rule of a predominant drive. Only great passion can produce a great work.” (page 63)
“Man, like all forms of life, is in a constant state of becoming. There is no stability, only ascent or decline. To ascend is to overcome decadence through strength. Lack of growth is just another term for weakness…there are only souls being put into order and souls falling into disorder…For the soul, as for society, the aim is not so much the establishment of order as the act of establishing order.” (page 91)
“Style is that art of life which begets greatness. Those who do not live as an attempt to make of their life a work of art cannot understand why learned technique may not replace passion and spiritual strength. To achieve style one must first have the power to order one’s multiple soul, to give it leadership.” (page 132)
“Greatness, then, is always the product of the disciplined stimulation of strong drives. Only those with a heroic disposition will burden themselves with the task of realizing these ideals within themselves. And only the philosopher, artist, and saint, Nietzsche declared, are ‘no longer animal.’[…] Man has a multiple soul. Unlike the lower animals, he is a battleground of warring instincts. Participation in the conflictual politics of the soul is the dictate of higher morality – the mark of heroic individualism. But this imperative of self-development does not contradict Nietzsche’s tenet of innate determination. Growth is nothing but the rearrangement of drives, a change of political regime.” (page 209)
“The self is not so much created as unfolded…As the individual ‘creates’ himself over time, facet after facet of the preexisting self is revealed. Yet the self is never completely discovered. Its unfolding is as the paring of an infinitely large onion.” (page 215)
According to Parkes, if self-mastery is attained, this will ultimately impact the flux of the multiplicity and allow for a certain relaxation of your self-discipline. Attaining your style translates into a relaxation of self-discipline and experiencing the natural “flow” of your multiplicity: “The will’s ‘power of mastery’ becomes such that it is now safe to ‘give back to the drives their freedom,’ in the confidence that they will now ‘go where our best inclines.’ By the end of this second phase, in which ‘the entire affective system is stimulated and intensified,’ one is able to act with total spontaneity – strangely but knowingly ‘unable not to react’ – moved now by the mysterious power of Dionysus (TI 9.10).
“One can fully channel the power of the ‘negative’ drives only when one has the courage to relax the harsh discipline to which they have long been subjected, allowing their massive energies to flow again through the ‘great economy’ of the soul. This is a dangerous undertaking which conduces to a kind of freedom of which only the greater human beings are capable.” (pp. 357 – 358)
Here’s another characteristic of drives. They have power. To come full circle, the multiplicity possesses a power drive that basically is the engine for all the other drives. In most people the power drive is mundane, not especially passionate. But in higher persons, according to Nietzsche, it is intense. This is basic “evolutionary theory of the will to power.” A true master of the multiplicity masters the largest number and diversity of drives. Even life-negating drives have power. The master of the multiplicity, rich in passions and contradictions, finds power in even the drives and affects that would otherwise cause trouble. Even more, the master channels it with all the life-affirming powers into the creative act of becoming.
There you have it. Happiness is not the goal of Nietzsche’s psychology. Peace is not the goal. Realization is not the goal. Although, it must be said, there is nothing wrong with happiness, peace, and realization along the way. But they are not ends or even the correct goals of a truly modern psychology. The goal, the end, is to discover and overcome challenges and resistances.
There are some obvious deficiencies in Nietzsche psychology. First of all, it is elitist. It is intended for his romantic era idea of a “higher” person, someone with great passion and intensity. Most people will be victims of their drives for all their lives. They are not especially passionate or intense and are incapable of dealing with their drives. They keep making the same mistakes, keep harming themselves and others in the same manner, and so forth. So it isn’t a very practical psychology for the mass of humanity, although recognizing the multiplicity, by itself, is probably helpful to most people.
Also, it is a harsh, Prussian-like psychology. You must bear the weight of life, wage "war" upon life. You must overcome every struggle and obstacle to achieve your ends. That has a tinge of militarism in it, which is partly the reason Nietzsche appeals to fascist type persons. Actually, this is all potentially very helpful because life is suffering, after all. So if you are going to suffer you might as well create and command things. But, nevertheless, Nietzsche’s immersion in Prussian culture affects his psychology in ways that limit the universality of some of it.
More than anything, Nietzsche’s psychology suffers from the fact that there is no interpersonal dimension to it. There is the multiplicity and there is the culture and society in which the multiplicity expresses itself among other multiplicities. But Nietzsche never explores or analyzes how his psychology relates to two or more multiplicities trying to live with each other. This is probably reflective of the fact that, but for his college student days and up through the time of his “affair” with Lou Salome, Nietzsche was pretty much a hermit, particularly late in life. He did not relate to others directly so much as correspond with others. Psychologically, Nietzsche had nothing to say about how to resolve an argument as a couple, how to nurture relationships, or how to value your friends. How to “win friends and influence people” was not Nietzsche’s suit. This is the most glaring weakness of his psychology.
Nevertheless, challenging yourself to either work on yourself or to project your dominant drives into the world, to constantly adapt to the flux and to channel all your inner energies, positive or negative, into whatever comes next, all this lies at the core of his psychology. That seems to have vast mental health value to those who are capable of it.
To repeat, Nietzsche’s psychology is not about the realization of anything. It is a behavioral, self-observing mode of existence, where resistances are sought out and creatively overcome. Only in those moments, moments often of creating new values, do we reach our fullest potential, achieving our style – of becoming. Only in those moments do you “become who you are.” Style is the existential essence of Nietzsche’s psychology and, also, the end result of Nietzsche’s philosophy from the “I am dancing on the edge of the abyss” perspective. If you disregard all the rest of Nietzsche's philosophy and hold only on to this, it can be sufficient.
“…those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses that their nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye…” (from GS 290, additional book five published in 1887)
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