According to Rousseau, we are
born free but we live out our life in chains. Although some people subvert background
context and foreground personhood such that the chains are believed to be
societally imposed as if people are not sufficiently free to transcend or
counter the “binding” external strictures of some institution or society,
Nietzsche argues that the sovereign individual is lies at the end of an arduous
long process by which our species has become bred to be “to a certain degree
necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable” and
thus certain people can be trusted to be reliable in promise-keeping.[1]
Such people are free individuals. They are autonomous even against the “Though
Shalt Nots” of moral mores, which had their place as virtual societal straitjackets
in the development of the species but are legitimately cast off by people who
can be relied upon to keep promises without violating them in the heat of the
moment. Such people are individuals, but not narcissists, for the latter
calculate each moment as to what lies in their self-interest—the feelings of
others be damned if they are in the way. It is ironic that moral responsibility
applies to the latter rather than to the autonomous individuals because only
the free ones can call their “dominating instinct” a “conscience.”[2]
Modern society, at least in the West, could use an elaboration on Nietzsche’s description
of the autonomous individual in so far as such a person is antipodal to the
herd animals on whom moral responsibility should be imposed because they cannot
be trusted, for they are not promise-keepers. St. Paul’s dictum to keep the
fools at a distance is ironically in line with the second essay of Nietzsche’s On
the Genealogy of Morals, where the Christian ascetic priest is lampooned for
its innate weakness even as it seeks to dominate the strong out of ressentiment.
At the end of human prehistory,
and arguably even well beyond that—at the end of a process in which “the
morality of mores and the social straitjacket” fashioned the species as being
capable of being relied upon and thus of having a memory fortified against the
encroachment of legitimate forgetfulness—lies “the ripest fruit,” the “sovereign
individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom,
autonomous and supramoral.”[3]
Such an individual must be in some sense have achieved regularity, and thus be calculable
by others who rely on the promises made. To Nietzsche, autonomous and moral
are mutually exclusive.[4]
But this does not mean that the autonomous person who is free from one’s own
instinctual urges that compete with that of that of conscience necessarily
acts immorally. This “emancipated individual,” freed from moral mores, even
well-ensconced as custom, that would otherwise be binding and thus hold a
person as though in chains, has one’s “own independent, protracted will and the
right to make promises.”[5]
In this type, we have our species “come to completion.”[6]
Free will is not a precondition for external moral customs to be
legitimately applied to human beings, and yet it is the autonomous individual who
has “the right to make promises.”[7]
In such a person, conscience as an instinct is dominate and thus we can
say that the morality of keeping one’s own promises is internal and thus
consistent with free will.
Whereas Rousseau’s fictional
character, Emile, says to his mentor, Lycurgus, “I have decided to be as you made
me,” Nietzsche’s autonomous individual says to oneself, “I have decided to me
as I have made me,” as being capable of being relied on in the keeping
of one’s own promises to others. Such people voluntarily hold themselves to
their word. Paradoxically, the autonomous individual “is bound to honor his
peers, the strong and reliable (those with the right to make promises)—that
is, all those who promise like sovereigns, reluctantly, rarely, slowly, who are
chary of trusting, whose trust is a mark of distinction, who give their
word something that can be relied on because they know themselves strong enough
to maintain it in the face of accidents, even ‘in the face of fate.’”[8]
Accidents are things that come along that tempt a person to violate one’s promises.
Even though an autonomous individual free of moral custom is free to put one’s
instinctual urges that favor satisfying those “accidents” before the urge to
keep one’s promises, the person can be relied on to go on putting the
promise-keeping urge first. “Here I stand and I cannot do otherwise,” Luther
stated as a priest free from Rome; he could have done otherwise, but is inner
conscience, a long-standing instinctual urge, was his autonomy. He
was free to overcome (i.e., master) his most intractable instinctual urges to
the contrary, and strong enough to do precisely that. The output of his mastery
were his 95 theses, which he defiantly nailed to a church door. His statement, “I
cannot do otherwise,” should not be taken literally as instantiating
determinism, but, rather, as a statement of a free decision to go on principle
with a resounding force of conscience that follows from a free choice rather
than as cutting it off. This is how autonomous and cannot can be
viewed as being consistent rather than as contradictory.
The autonomy is inside the
“ripened fruit” of our species. The type of moral responsibility that is
consistent with this is that which comes voluntarily from within. “The proud
awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the
consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and over fate, has
in his case penetrated to the profoundest depths and become instinct, the dominating
instinct.”[9]
The power over oneself is one’s will in choosing to treat one’s conscience as one’s
dominant instinct, but can an instinct that is dominate over others really be chosen?
Is not the outcome of tussling instincts a result of the contending instincts
rather than a separate, internal will? Nietzsche states that the strong cannot
be other than strong, and the weak are inherently weak, so presumably free will
does not apply to the decision on whether to be weak or strong.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche gives
the autonomous individual credit for having a reliable will. “The ‘free’ man,
the possessor of a protracted and unbreakable will, also possesses his measure
of value.”[10] Perhaps
then the autonomous individual applies a measure of high value to the
conscience, which can thus act as an instinct that is dominant (though Nietzsche
viewed the instincts in physiological terms). Kant claims that reason has absolute
value because rational beings use reason to apply value to things. For
Nietzsche, it seems that the free will—autonomy within a person—has absolute
value because it is the will that can assign values to contending instincts if
the will is free of even the most dominant of them, but is the will not
itself an instinct according to Nietzsche?
The thorny questions on
whether the autonomous individual has free will rather than merely being
autonomous of moral customs aside, Nietzsche’s distinction between a
promise-keeper and a promise-breaker is clear. A pathos of distance naturally
exists between the two basic types of people because one is a free agent who
can be trusted whereas the other is a slave to himself and thus should not be
trusted. To be able to keep promises,
such that “a world of strange new things, circumstances, even acts of will may
be interposed without breaking this long chain of will,” and thus to be able “to
stand security for his own future,” such a person should “be aware of
his superiority over all those who lack the right to make promises and stand as
their own guarantors.”[11]
How “much trust, how much fear, how much reverence he arouses—he ‘deserves’ all
three—and of how this mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery
over circumstances, over nature, and over all more short-willed and unreliable
creatures?”[12]
The deservingness with the superiority, and indeed the respect due all distinguish
the promise-keeper from the promise-breaker. The mastery of the autonomous individual
extends even over nature, such that perhaps in willing the instinctual
urge that we call conscience to be dominant, the free individual makes it so physiologically
within himself. In utter contrast are “the feeble windbags who promise without
the right to do so, . . . and the liar who breaks his word even at the moment
he utters it.”[13]
Although Nietzsche claims that the free individuals who will themselves to be
reliable in promise-making such that the promises are kept are “bound to reserve
a kick” for the promise-breakers, I contend that any association would
violate the natural pathos of distance that legitimately exists between the
promise-keepers and promise-breakers (and liars).
Ironically, the inferior person,
whose narcissism manifests as pathological lies in order to manipulate other
people, is more likely to enforce the distance out of envy and resentment,
whereas the promise-keeper is likely to engage with other promise-keepers
without a thought to the pathetic losers who find it so easy to break their promises
and otherwise lie to get what they want. Such people are those who instinctively
obviate commitment by “redefining” a romantic relationship as anything goes, including
even separate sex with emotional attachment or romantic connection.
For example, being confronted by
an autonomous individual for acting like a “trophy whore,” a narcissist who is
enslaved to his most intractable urges (and thus refuses to keep promises, and
thus cannot and should not be trusted) will refuse to look within and admit to the
validity of the accusation and thus be willing to change. As though a trapped animal, the
promise-breaker and liar will strike out at the messenger, viewing that friend as
a threat. People with a vested interest in the promiscuity and even in
promise-breaking as if it were a virtue would gladly be manipulated by the narcissist
into pushing back against the promise-keeper even though the latter would actually
like to see the liar as reliable and thus as being capable and deserving of trust.
In short, even though the
pathos of distance may be created by the promise-keeper refusing to trust the
promise-breaker and pathological liar, the latter makes sure that the distance
is enforced, out of sheer anger. “How dare you call me a trophy whore!”, “I
will never talk to you again,” and even, “I’m going to manipulate people I know
to run you out of town so I never have to see your disgusting face again” constitute
a very different response than, “I don’t like myself for lying and reneging so
much; I didn’t realize what I have become. Would you please help me so I might
become capable of being trusted so someday I could enjoy genuine friendships
and even an emotionally-intimate romantic relationship with someone whom I can
trust?”
Sadly, the narcissist who views himself as too weak even to ask for help and perceives wake-up calls as attacks will never change, never be trusted; such a person will go through life in a series of superficial relationships lacking commitment and trust. No promise-keeper would agree to be lied to and betrayed by a person who insists on having his cake and eating it too. Even in locales where having separate sex with other romantic interests is the norm, and even deemed worthy to be imposed in a relationship, narcissists will ruin themselves in refusing to maturate into adulthood. Of course, an autonomous individual would object to such an arrangement as being utterly selfish and inconsiderate, and even hurtful; a pathos of distance would naturally be erected like the wall that separated Eastern and Western Europe after World War II for decades.
Whereas an autonomous individual has the strength and free will with which to face oneself internally and thus to change so as to grow as a person and be capable of emotional intimacy in friendship and romance, people who let their immediate urges rule are static entities that will not change. If the two types try to become friends or even a romantic couple, what begins as a stream between them inexorably becomes an abyss that cannot be crossed because they are like oil and water. I am not suggesting that autonomous individuals adopt a savior complex; that would diminish their internal freedom. Rather, I submit that calling out narcissistic liars is a worthy activity because there is a chance that one day some may change as a result, even if they are likely to retaliate because that is easier than facing their own demons and recognizing that selfless love may actually exist and have been freely bestowed on them without them being able to reciprocate. Because Nietzsche claims that the weak cannot become strong, even with external help, it may that simply respecting the natural pathos of distance that separates the honest from the liars is best. It is sad, though, that potentially reliable people who are otherwise good people, even lovable and potentially deserving of unconditional love, must be lost due to their own stubborn intractability and refusal to look within rather than act on the momentary instinctual urge to strike out as if a trapped wild animal. Primitive animals are not free of their momentary, primal urges, and so they are not free to hold themselves as reliable, and thus as trustworthy by other animals. What a species we are in having bred ourselves as a species by means of moral customs to be reliable and yet to still have in our midst people who are utterly untrustworthy, who even treat commitment as if it were a dirty word and use sex as a weapon so as to inflict pain on promise-keepers as if being reliable, and thus honest, were a crime against humanity. The spite with which the weak resent the strong is something on which Nietzsche wrote extensively. Two different orbits; two different types, yet astonishingly of the very same species!
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 496.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., pp. 494-95.
12. Ibid., pp. 495-96.
13. Ibid, p. 496.
