Nietzsche, Nature, Nurture

Abstract

Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self‐contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche's two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness (and our acknowledgement of our fatedness) emerges as integral to our capacity to become self‐creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche's doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought.

Toward a Neo-Nietzschean Theory of Human Development

“…Rather, quite the opposite, for the dual nature of the self (a self as given and a self as tasked) implies that the created self is built on a foundation that is immutable and invariant; it is something, like one's genome and the time and place of one's birth, that is completely outside of one's control and ability to change. Ridley (2016) refers to this commitment to an inalterable minimal self at the center of self-creation as Nietzsche's fatalism. However, fatalism here should not be confused with the traditional or commonplace view that a particular outcome (a developmental outcome, for example) is predestined or doomed to occur in an inevitable, unavoidable way.…”

“…Having identified what develops in a neo-Nietzschean theory of human development, I would like to return to the question of what development is in a neo-Nietzschean theory of human development, which brings us back to the themes of unity, integration, self-creation, and continuous development. Ridley's (2016) discussion of selfcreation is informed by this understanding of fate and he notes that successful self-creation depends on some critical level of self-knowledge and lack of self-deception, for in order to embark upon self-creation as a task, a person must first understand what they have been given in their unique balance of strengths and weaknesses. In other words, a person must be capable of undertaking an honest appraisal of their individual powers.…”

“…Where you are largely determines where you can go. Ridley (2016) states the point eloquently when he writes, "self-creation, in Nietzsche's view, is made possible by our learning and discovering about environmental facts, about species and subspecies facts, and about facts peculiar to ourselves. It depends upon our being able to distinguish between the facts that it is beyond our power to change, facts which we can modify or whose effects we can ameliorate, and facts whose obtaining is up to us" (pp.…”

Nietzsche on the necessity of repression

“…For an instructive account of how Nietzsche's theory of self-cultivation is compatible with his claim in BGE 231 that there are certain ineradicable parts of the self (the 'unteachable […] granite of spiritual fatum' that exists within each of us), see Ridley (2017 Katsafanas (2013, 733-5). Haberkamp (2000, 88-92).…”

“…In the second essay of GM, for instance, he advises that we turn our self-mortifying sense of guilt or 'bad conscience'what he describes as an inwardly turned '[a]nimosity, cruelty, […] pleasure of pursuing, raiding, changing and destroying [Zerstörung]' (GM II 16; emphasis added)onto our life-denying, 'perverse inclinations' (unnatürliche Hänge) (GM II 24; original emphasis). These are the inclinations, Nietzsche tells us, which have 50 For a relevant and more expansive study of Nietzsche's gardening metaphors, and particularly his conception of pruning, see Ridley (2017).…”