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Beyond compassion: on Nietzsche’s moral therapy in Dawn

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Abstract

In this essay I seek to show that a philosophy of modesty informs core aspects of both Nietzsche’s critique of morality and what he intends to replace morality with, namely, an ethics of self-cultivation. To demonstrate this I focus on Dawn: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, a largely neglected text in his corpus where Nietzsche carries out a quite wide-ranging critique of morality, including Mitleid. It is one of Nietzsche’s most experimental works and is best read, I claim, as an Epicurean-inspired critique of the present and an exercise in moral therapy. In the opening sections I draw attention to the wider social dimension of the text and its concern with a morality of compassion, which is rarely done in the literature. I then turn to highlighting Nietzsche’s “Epicurean moment,” followed by two sections on Nietzsche on the self in which I aim to bring to light his ethics of self-cultivation and show in what ways his revaluation makes central to ethics a modest egoism and care of self. In the conclusion to the essay I provide a contrast between Nietzsche and Kant and deal with reservations readers might have about his ethics. Overall, the essay seeks to make a contribution to an appreciation of Dawn as a work of moral therapy.

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Notes

  1. Nietzsche (1988, volume 9, 6 [158], p. 237).

  2. Nietzsche (1974, section 335).

  3. See Deleuze (1988, Chap. 2), Foucault (1997). For Deleuze whereas ‘ethics’ refers to a typology of ‘immanent modes of existence,’ ‘morality’ refers existence to otherworldly, spiritual, or transcendent values and is the judgment of God or the system of judgment. Thus the transcendent opposition of the values good and evil is replaced by the qualitative difference of the modes of existence that we can call good and bad. As Nietzsche points out, to think beyond good and evil does not mean thinking “beyond good and bad.” Nietzsche (2006, essay one I, section 17).

  4. See Foucault (1997, p. 262): “From the idea that the self it not given to us, I think that there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.” For an attempt to distinguish Nietzsche from Foucault see Ure (2008, especially pp. 76–7).

  5. Nietzsche (2011, section 560).

  6. Nietzsche (2007, III, ‘Daybreak’, section 1).

  7. Nietzsche (1997, section 38).

  8. Nietzsche (1997, section 38).

  9. Nietzsche (1997, section 38).

  10. See Rée (2003, p. 87 and Chap. 1, pp. 89–99).

  11. Nietzsche (1997, section 37).

  12. Young (2010, p. 297).

  13. Nietzsche (1974, section 51).

  14. Nietzsche (2011, section 453).

  15. Nietzsche (1997, section 2).

  16. Nietzsche (2011, Preface, section 4).

  17. Nietzsche (2011, section 462).

  18. Nietzsche (2011, section 534).

  19. Nietzsche (2011, section 132).

  20. Nietzsche (2011, section 132).

  21. Cartwright (1984, p. 96).

  22. Cartwright (1984, pp. 96–7).

  23. Cartwright (1984, p. 98).

  24. Nietzsche (2011, section 116).

  25. See especially Nietzsche (2011, sections 132–38). It is perhaps important to bear in mind that in taking to task Mitleid in the ways that he does in these sections of Dawn Nietzsche is working with Schopenhauer’s conception of it where it involves the complete identification with the suffering of another. See Schopenhauer (1995, p. 144).

  26. Nietzsche (2011, section 147).

  27. Nietzsche (2011, section 137).

  28. Nussbaum (1994, p. 140). Nussbaum claims that in his cult of Stoic strength Nietzsche depicts “a fearful person, a person who is determined to seal himself off from risk, even at the cost of loss of love and value” (1994, p. 160). Like the otherworldliness he abhors, the Stoicism he endorses is a form of self-protection, expressing “a fear of this world and its contingencies” (ibid.). This picture of Nietzsche does not tally with the stress we find placed in Dawn on the need for the individual that wishes to become sovereign to take risks and to experiment. We will grow, Nietzsche stresses, only by experiencing dissatisfaction with ourselves and assuming the risk of experimenting in life, freely taking the journey through our wastelands, quagmires, and icy glaciers. The ones who don’t take the risk of life, he says, will never make the journey around the world that they themselves are, but will remain trapped within themselves like a knot on the log they were born to, a mere happenstance (2011, section 343). The figure Nussbaum esteems over Nietzsche is Rousseau, who is prized for his “eloquent writings on pity” (1994, p. 140) and whose thinking lies at the basis of “democratic-socialist thinking” (1994, p. 159). For an intelligent response to some of Nussbaum’s concerns over Nietzsche on Mitleid, see von Tevenar (2007); for criticisms of Rousseau on pity see Boyd (2004) and Ure (2006). For Nussbaum’s criticism of Nietzsche’s Stoicism see also Nussbaum (2001, p. 362 and p. 384).

  29. See Elveton (2004, p. 193).

  30. Nietzsche (2011, section 139).

  31. Schopenhauer notes that when one person connects with another through compassion what they have done, in effect, is to have pierced the veil of Maya, that is, they have broken the spell of individuation and now can see that “all is One.” This is why Schopenhauer says that virtue is “practical mysticism” that springs from the same knowledge that constitutes the essence of all mysticism. For Schopenhauer, metaphysics is virtue translated into action and proceeds from the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the identity of all beings. See Schopenhauer (1969, volume one, p. 373).

  32. Nietzsche (2011, section 133).

  33. Nietzsche (2011, section 134).

  34. Nietzsche (2011, section 134).

  35. Nietzsche (1968, section 928). In this note Nietzsche writes that “greatness of character” consists in possessing the affects to the highest degree but also having them under control.

  36. Ure (2006, p. 81).

  37. Nietzsche (2011, section 132).

  38. Ure (2006, p. 88 note 45).

  39. Nietzsche (2011, section 164).

  40. Nietzsche (2011, section 164).

  41. Nietzsche (2011, section 194).

  42. Nietzsche (2011, section 196).

  43. Nietzsche (2011, section 547).

  44. Nietzsche (2011, section 174).

  45. See Taine (1906, p. 191). Taine writes here of “aristocratical and commercial society…”

  46. See Ure (2006, p. 82).

  47. Nietzsche (2011, section 179).

  48. Nietzsche (2011, section 105).

  49. Nietzsche (2011, section 173).

  50. Nietzsche (2011, section 164).

  51. Catherine Wilson neatly lays out the central tenets of the Epicurean system in a recent study. They include: the denial of supernatural agency engaged in the design and maintenance of the world; the view that self-moving, subvisible particles acting blindly bring about all growth, change, and decline; and the insistence that the goal of ethical self-discipline, which involves asceticism, is the minimization of mental and physical suffering (Wilson 2008, p. 37). It is on this last point that Nietzsche will come to later criticize Epicureanism and describe Epicurus as a “typical decadent.” See Nietzsche (2005, section 30). In the same text Epicurus is once again prized on account of his battle against “the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity,” his fight against the “corruption of the soul” through notions of guilt, punishment, and immortality (Nietzsche 2005, section 58). For further insight into Nietzsche’s reception of Epicurus see Caygill (2006).

  52. Nietzsche (1987, p. 418).

  53. Hadot (1995, p. 87).

  54. Nietzsche (1988, volume 9, 15 [59]).

  55. Nietzsche (1986, section 295).

  56. Nietzsche (2011, section 72).

  57. Nietzsche (1986, section 7).

  58. Nietzsche (1986, section 7). See also Epicurus, ‘Letter to Menoeceus’ (1993, pp. 61–8).

  59. On the importance of chance see Nietzsche (2011, sections 13, 33, 36).

  60. Hadot (1995, p. 252).

  61. Nietzsche (1986, section 5).

  62. Abbey (2000, p. 99).

  63. Nietzsche (1986, section 6).

  64. Nietzsche (1986, section 6).

  65. For further insight into the different depictions of Socrates we find in Nietzsche see Nehamas (1998, pp. 128–156). See also Hadot (1995, pp. 147–79). In Dawn section 9 Socrates is said to be one of those (rare) moralists who offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance and as a means to their own advantage or a personal key to happiness.

  66. Nietzsche (2011, section 435).

  67. Nietzsche (1986, section 5).

  68. Nietzsche (1986, section 16).

  69. Nietzsche (1986, section 310; see also section 350).

  70. Nietzsche (2007, II, section 10).

  71. Nietzsche (2011, section 115).

  72. Nietzsche (2011, section 115).

  73. Nietzsche (2011, section 119).

  74. Nietzsche (2011, section 119).

  75. For a recent account of dreams that bears out some of Nietzsche’s insights but not others, see McGinn (2004). As McGinn points out one crucial difference between the dream state and the waking state is that in the former dreams are “modally exhaustive” or blind. As McGinn explains: “In waking consciousness I can be perceiving one thing and imagining something else: there is the perceived world and the imagined world. I ‘live’ in both worlds, the actual and the possible…But in the dream there is only the dream world and no envisaged alternative to it; so I feel condemned to that world, since I can picture no other,” (p. 80).

  76. Nietzsche (2011, section 119).

  77. Nietzsche (1974, section 304).

  78. Nietzsche (1974, section 335).

  79. Nietzsche (1988, volume 9, 6 [130], p. 229).

  80. See Sachs (2008, p. 91).

  81. Ibid. 95.

  82. Nietzsche (1997, Preface).

  83. Nietzsche (2011, section 553).

  84. Nietzsche (2011, section 148).

  85. Nietzsche (1986, section 45).

  86. Nietzsche (2011, section 106).

  87. Nietzsche (2011, section 108).

  88. Nietzsche (2011, section 194).

  89. Nietzsche (2011, section 215).

  90. Nietzsche (2011, section 50).

  91. Nietzsche (2011, section 189).

  92. Nietzsche (2011, section 546).

  93. Nietzsche (2011, section 131).

  94. Thomas Brobjer suggests that Nietzsche did not read the extended ‘Discourses’ and was only familiar with Epictetus’s short ‘Manual’ or Enchiridion, and this might account for the somewhat one-sided portrait of him we get from Nietzsche’s appraisal. See Brobjer (2003, p. 430). For a full picture of Epictetus see Long (2002).

  95. See Long (2002, p. 3). Long also notes that Epictetus devotes more thought to the care of the self than he does to what is incumbent on human beings as members of society (p. 30).

  96. Nietzsche (2011, section 79).

  97. Nietzsche (2011, section 208); and see Sachs (2008, p. 88).

  98. Nietzsche (2011, section 86).

  99. Nietzsche (2011, section 516).

  100. Nietzsche (1968, section 364).

  101. Nietzsche (1988, volume 9, 11 [7], p. 443).

  102. The Stoics regarded emotions as harmful mistaken judgments based on an immature habit of regarding oneself as the centre of the world; they encouraged people to follow cosmic reason and view themselves as its singular moments in the rational universe. See Knuuttila (2004, p. 6). For insight into Nietzsche’s Stoicism and use of Stoic therapies see Ure (2008); see also Elveton (2004).

  103. Epictetus (2008, p. 86).

  104. See Ure (2008, p. 46).

  105. Nietzsche (2011, section 128).

  106. Ure (2008, p. 46).

  107. On these points see Ure (2008, pp. 47ff).

  108. Nietzsche (1997, section 37).

  109. Nietzsche (2011, section 132).

  110. Nietzsche (2011, section 339).

  111. Nietzsche (2005, section 11).

  112. See Kant (1964, p. 61): “Moderation in affections and passions, self-control, and sober reflection are not only good in many respects: they may even seem to constitute part of the inner worth of a person.”

  113. Kant writes: “Out of love for humanity I am willing to allow that most of our actions may accord with duty; but if we look more closely at our scheming and striving, we everywhere come across the dear self, which is always turning up; and it is on this that the purpose of our actions is based—not on the strict commands of duty, which often require self-denial” (Kant 1964, p. 75).

  114. Nietzsche (1974, section 335).

  115. Sachs (2008, p. 90).

  116. Nietzsche (2011, section 443).

  117. Nietzsche (2011, section 485).

  118. Nietzsche (2011, section 491).

  119. Abbey (2000, p. 61).

  120. Abbey (2000, p. 61). See also Richardson (2004, pp. 176–80).

  121. Abbey (2000, p. 61).

  122. Nietzsche (2011, section 146).

  123. Nietzsche (2011, section 146).

  124. Nietzsche (2011, section 146).

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    Keith Ansell-Pearson

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Ansell-Pearson, K. Beyond compassion: on Nietzsche’s moral therapy in Dawn . Cont Philos Rev 44, 179–204 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9181-x

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