Free Will and Moral Responsibility

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!

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 495.
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.

Intimidation in Retail: The Case of San Francisco

Visuals are an important ingredient in consumer marketing, so it is surprising to come across retail managers who are so purblind as concerns the latent yet obvious passive aggression in some of the visuals that those managers themselves approve in the name of security. The espoused, yet utterly fake claim that customer experience is improved by the added sense of safety—the actual underlying motive lies in loss prevention—is typically outweighed by the very human negative experience from being intentionally intimidated by passive-aggressive visuals. It may be that such managers, frustrated by high rates of in-store petty theft (i.e., “shoplifting”), are unconsciously taking their latent aggression out of the customers as a group. Even if not, the lack of judgment is palpable from the visuals themselves. It is no wonder that an increasing number of customers prefer shopping online. 

The full essay is at "Retail Intimidation ."

Organizational Man: Refined or Repressed?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal is the courageous, ancient Greco-Roman nobility, including the unashamed conquerors replete with self-confident will to power rather than shame at having vanquished formidable resistance. Rather than actually advocating that we return to the raping and pillaging that took place back then, Nietzsche wanted to depict modern, emaciated man as a contrast in order to turn the weakening of man around in Europe. Similar to Sinclair Lewis, who wrote his satirical novel, Babbit (1922) to showcase the utter vacuity of the middle-class businessman in America, Nietzsche laments “the reduction of the beast of prey ‘man’ to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal . . .”[1] By that he meant us: modern, enervated, and cultured incarnations of human nature relative to the full, untamed, and resilient lives of the ancient Greco-Roman conquerors. Having no knowledge of the lives that they lived in terms of full, unashamed and unconstrained will to power as will to living life with gusto, we scarcely realize the extent to which our societal institutions and vocational organizations box up our nature to that which is inoffensive and even polite even to competitors.

How very much our very nature has been contorted so as to fit within the modern straitjackets that we moderns ourselves have constructed. We have cut off our limbs and yet even as we still hold the knives, news of our deeds has not reached us, like light from a distant star has already happened but has not yet reached our planet. Nietzsche uses this imagery in explaining the death, or, more accurately, discrediting of the Abrahamic conception of God—Gott ist tot. Anticipating Freud, Nietzsche liked to remind us that we don’t really know ourselves as well as we think we do. In grizzled suits sitting in an office—something utterly unknown to the Roman conquerors!—are we not purblind when facing a mirror at “the repellent sight of the ill-constituted, dwarfed, atrophied, and poisoned?”[2] Who is aware of being poisoned when each dose is small and the course of weakening is of long duration? In fact, “the ‘tame man,’ the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man, has already learned to feel to feel himself as the goal and zenith, as the meaning of history, as ‘higher man.’”[3] Like arrogance on stilts during a flood, modern man speaks of progress while ignoring the weakening impact of creature comforts in sedating our will to power as will to experiencing the fullness of life into something like a will to comfort.

At this point in Genealogy, Nietzsche writes as only he has—vintage Nietzsche. “At this point I cannot suppress a sigh and a last hope. What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”[4] Elsewhere in his writing, Nietzsche refers to the bad odor of the weak, voluntarily impotent creatures whose inner bird-of-prey nature has been replaced by spite and resentment of the strong under the subterfuge of polite society.

Modern man knows passive aggression all too well; university faculties specialize in it under the cover of calmness. To be not calm, but to shout at the betrayal of a friend—this we have almost lost. Stuffing feelings can diminish direct communication that is unashamedly honest. Even though direct, unfiltered communication of especially strong feelings is generally considered indecent in public, such communication clears the air by flushing toxic residue away so genuine human connection can finally exist or the combatants can separate cleanly and forget each other. This advice applies of course to romantic relationships, but also to co-workers in the workplace. How shocking it would be to Babbit to hear two workers shouting at each other in a workplace that has been designed to remove all but a pallid version of human nature in its fullness! Of course, the need for monetary compensation to cover rent, utilities, and food makes employees reasonably fearful of bringing their full human nature to work. My point is that the ubiquity of passive aggression in the workplace means that too much of our innate nature is repressed in the business world; perhaps two angry employees could take their argument outside, escaping the overly disinfected office space for a bit.

In an emotionally-fearful society of banal convenience, a person can be unaware of how “much one is able to endure: distress, want, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude. Fundamentally one can cope with everything else, born as one is to a subterranean life of struggle; one emerges again and again into the light, one experiences again and again one’s golden hour of victory—and then one stands forth as one was born, unbreakable, tensed, ready for new, even harder, remoter things, like a bow that distress only serves to draw tauter.”[5] How different such an expression of human nature is than that which is permissible under the tight watch of security cameras. So much of our nature is proscribed by organizational policies—as if policies were laws and subcontracted security guard were police. In utter disgust at modern man having become “thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent,” Nietzsche yearns for even just a glimpse of a person “wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!”[6] Nietzsche wanted to believe in our species but found a downward trajectory from strength to weakness—a “diminution and leveling.”[7] Nietzsche would likely claim that the hierarchies that exist in social/religious, business, and governmental organizations pale in comparison to natural hierarchies that enable a pathos of distance between the now-rare, strong breed that values and acts out ancient noble virtues such as courage and honesty and the now ubiquitous weak breed of timid, emotionally-vacuous organizational humanoids.

The modern woman who is attracted to the insipid corporate type sufficiently high on the corporate ladder has lost her way, Nietzsche would no doubt say, and is denying her primal nature; not so the woman who is instinctually attracted to a passionate, dominate male who lifts weights and is not ashamed to be vocal in overcoming resistance from a rival and even from her, and who wrestles or maybe even street-fights from time to time when provoked rather than calls on police to intercede, thus subcontracting his basic instincts. So distant the corporate man is from raw human instinct, and yet modern society counts business executives as powerful and of high standing in society. It is as if we all have been fooled into taking weakness for strength. Business ethicists lash out at business managers with “Thou Shalt Not!” as if the managers should be ashamed of the power that they wield, but this assumes that corporate power evinces Nietzschean strength as self-confident pride rather than timidity in overcoming obstacles. So very pallid is corporate speak, and yet how very many nonsupervisory, uneducated workers on the margins, such as at call centers, use the tone and lingo as a club as if from a position of strength rather than weakness. The weak who seek to dominate the strong—think of a call-center employee on the phone with a legitimately aggrieved customer—are not strong enough to master their most intractable instinct, Nietzsche claims, which is to feel the pleasure of power even by dominating if necessary. The strong need not dominate, for their self-confident power overflows. Confidence is attractive, whereas dominance, which Nietzsche theorizes manifests from weakness, is ugly.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 478.

2. Ibid., p. 479.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 479-80.
5. Ibid., p. 480.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.