Friedrich Nietzsche: The Mad Scientist

In his The Gay Science (section 120), Friedrich Nietzsche rejects the “popular medical formulation of morality” for being too universal and, as a result, too reductive. When one compares the original claim, “virtue is the health of the soul,” with Nietzsche’s modified definition, “your virtue is the health of your soul,” one notices a number of important differences. The original claim suggests that virtue is a constant, that there is no room for distinction on any individual basis; whereas Nietzsche claims that virtue is a personal and subjective quality, that every individual soul requires different kinds of virtues to nourish it. Nietzsche elucidates this distinction between the two formulations when he likens health of the soul to health of the body: “deciding what is health even for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your powers, your impulses… Thus there are innumerable healths of the body.”

The emphasis placed on individual virtues coincides with his continually expressed belief that there are different types of people (e.g. noble, common, passionate, intellectual, etc.); one cannot deny the possibility or even the probability that different types of people have different types of souls that require different types of virtues. Nietzsche’s claim does, however, contain three potential problems: 1) he claims earlier in section 21 that virtues lead not to the health of the spirit, but to the “deterioration of the spirit”; 2) he claims that virtues “could look in one person like the opposite of health in another”; 3) he claims that we “need the sick soul as much as the healthy.” Nevertheless, each of these potential difficulties can be resolved upon further investigation.

The resolution to the apparent contradiction in Nietzsche’s book lies in an important distinction between types of virtues; that is to say, Nietzsche speaks about two different kinds of virtue in sections 21 and 120. Much like his analysis of the popular conception of morality in 120, Nietzsche uses section 21 to analyze the popular conceptions of virtue. In 21, Nietzsche focuses on what people and society generally refer to as virtues – i.e. “each virtue of the individual is a public utility and a private disadvantage with respect to the highest private end.” Rather than concluding that virtues victimize individuals and lead to spiritual degeneration, Nietzsche uses section 21 to implicate society and its skewed sense of morality that leads people to identify such ultimately injurious character traits as actual virtues that contribute to spiritual health. Indeed, he works himself practically into a frenzy as he considers the contradiction that society accepts as its standard of morality: that out of selfishness, everyone praises selflessness.

Nietzsche concludes that society misapplies the term “virtue” out of its own subverted moral structure, and one can conclude that the traits he investigates in section 120 represent an accurate assignment of the term. The fundamental difference between the two kinds of virtue lies in the agent of recognition: the public versus the individual. He decides that those virtues recognized by the public ultimately “dull the senses and make the spirit resistant to new attractions” (20). Conversely, when he says in section 214 that “virtue gives happiness and a type of blessedness only to those who have not lost faith in their virtue – not to those subtler souls whose virtue consists of a deep mistrust of themselves and of all virtue,” Nietzsche highlights the necessity of recognizing and believing in one’s own virtues as the way to achieve a truly healthy soul. This coincides with his belief in the individualization of virtue in that one must discover and have faith in what he finds truly virtuous in himself; he must not look to others’ virtues or consider what the public says of his character.

The second apparent problem in Nietzsche’s claim – whether the same trait can in one person contribute to spiritual health and in another person contribute to spiritual illness – forces the reader again to consider whether virtuosity contains a universal component. As we have already established, Nietzsche strongly believes that virtue is not universal and that any established moral framework is too limiting. But, can the same trait really have a completely opposite effect on two different peoples’ souls? How can any trait fully nurture one soul and fully deplete another? Nietzsche goes so far as to say not that a trait could possibly harm one person and heal another, but that “of course” such traits do exist (120).

Nietzsche’s theory in section 114 provides some resolution: “as soon as we see a new picture, we immediately construct it with the help of all the old experiences we have had depending on the degree of our honesty and justice. There are no experiences other than moral ones.” Essentially, Nietzsche believes that every experience contributes to our conception of morality, and that our morality, in turn, dictates our behavior; thus, as we continue to behave and interact, our morality continues to adapt and redirect our behavior, leading us to still more new experiences. Because everybody posses an [entirely] unique set of experiences, everybody’s conceptions of morality are unique.

Bearing in mind the notion of practically infinite life experiences (and consequently infinite moralities), one would be more surprised to find that a trait could exist that could not be a health to one person and a detriment to another. However, this resolution may also be too restrictive in the opposite direction, for it almost leads one to believe that no trait could exist that can be universally recognized as good or healthy. Can this be possible? The odds, when one considers how different everyone’s life has been, seem to make it impossible that everyone could agree on any one good virtue. Mustn’t there be some universal good?

Perhaps Nietzsche’s belief in different types of people can provide some insight into this question. Perhaps humanity is split into a number of broad categories of people, with the members of each different group having similar conceptions of virtue based on fundamentally similar experiences. In section 118, Nietzsche poses a relevant question: “Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into a function of a stronger cell?” He answers simply, “It has to,” much like in section 109, when he says, “in nature… there are only necessities.” Nietzsche continues the idea of natural necessity in aphorism 118 by examining the trait of compassion in terms of two types of people – the strong and the weak. When he says, “Compassion is essentially… a pleasant stirring [in the strong] of the drive to appropriate at the sight of the weaker; however, we must still keep in mind that ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are relative concepts,” Nietzsche makes an important clarification about the typification of people. “Strong” and “weak” imply nothing of good and bad – one is not better than the other – the terms are simply a differentiation based upon the facts of their character. Thus, his answer to the opening question (which implies requirement) paired with the example of compassion, suggests that compassion only nourishes the stronger soul because only the stronger soul possesses “the drive to appropriate… [and to] transform something into a function of himself” and therefore also possesses the need to exhibit compassion. Were the weaker person – whose character possesses a “drive to submit… and the wish to be desired” – to possess the trait of compassion, his soul would remain unfulfilled. Thus, one can conclude that traits do exist which contribute to health in one soul, and illness in another.

Having differentiated between various types of virtues and various types of people, and the various effects certain virtues can have on certain people, we must now address “the great question… whether we can do without illness, even for the development of our virtue.” Ought people to embrace only those virtues in themselves which contribute to health and reject any behavior that causes spiritual illness? Or do people really “need the sick soul as much as the healthy?”

In section 19, Nietzsche discusses evil with an analogy to a tree: “ask yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud height could do without bad weather and storms.” Interestingly, Nietzsche never says, “yes, the tree needs storms to grow tall,” as one might expect him to; instead, he leaves us with only our logic to conclude that in fact, a tree probably could grow tall without storms. Have we proved Nietzsche wrong, or has he proved himself wrong? Let us consider further and ask how strong would that tall tree be? Strong enough to hold itself up only in perfect weather, yes, but what if a storm were to come? Nietzsche abandons his non-explicitly answered tree analogy and jumps straight into a musing upon virtues, asking “whether misfortune and external resistance, whether any kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, greed, and violence, do not belong to the favourable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible?” Let us consider an important difference between the tree and virtue: a tree can grow tall without being challenged, but a virtue is born only out of spiritual storms. A real virtue is by its very nature strong, and not merely apparently strong; whereas the impressive (but weak) tree represents those so-called virtues observed by the public, which we have proved fail to deserve the term “virtue.” A true virtue derives the strength to support its owner’s faith through overcoming any evils present in a person’s character; and Nietzsche explicates this fact when he says, “the poison from which the weaker nature perishes strengthens the strong man – and he does not call it poison.”

Another way of understanding the need for illness lies in aphorism 307. When he says, “Something you formerly loved as a truth or a probability now strikes you as an error; you cast it off and believe your reason has made a victory. But maybe that error was as necessary for you then, when you were still another person – you are always another person – as are all your present ‘truths,’” Nietzsche suggests that an important part of spiritual health is growth, evolution, change. One should not hold fast to all one’s beliefs or behaviors, for one is ever-changing with every moment. A virtue for the old you may no longer be a virtue for the new you – “every virtue has its age” (159). As Nietzsche puts it, “every act ever performed was done in an altogether unique and unrepeatable way, and that this will be equally true of every future act… [so] let us stop brooding over the ‘moral value of our actions’” for they are perpetually in flux and cannot be set in stone (335).

A further argument supporting Nietzsche’s belief in the requirement of illness, lies in the idea of self-knowledge. An alternative formation of Nietzsche’s belief that “virtue gives happiness and a type of blessedness only to those who have not lost faith in their virtue,” is to say that the healthy spirit is the spirit in possession of self-knowledge. Anyone who truly knows himself knows that he must maintain a state of continuous and active introspection, for he is never as he was previously. Nietzsche asks, in 120, “whether especially our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge do not need the sick soul as much as the healthy,” and the only plausible answer is “YES!” We must understand the combinations of any given set of morals and behaviors that make our souls sick, and we must realize that our souls are or probably soon will be sick again if we don’t keep constant watch over the changing balance between our morality and behavior! We need understanding of the sick soul to understand better the requirements of a fit soul; we cannot find true or more permanent health without having weathered illness.

Have we come closer to uncovering the identity of Nietzsche’s ‘Gay Science’? The final question posed in aphorism 120, “whether the will to health alone is not a prejudice, a cowardice and a piece of most refined barbarism and backwardness,” seems at first to offer only a criticism of those people who try and ignore or deny the sick soul; yet is there more to this question beyond the immediate context? Is this question not really a question of the purpose of life itself? Could we not rephrase his question as, “ought people to will for health alone, even if, truly, such a goal represents an extreme prejudice?” Let us examine the word prejudice, a rather uncharacteristic word from Nietzsche, which seems much more likely to come from those Christians who preach that one must embrace asceticism and spiritual suffering. Perhaps he uses the word “prejudice” with a tone of irony; perhaps he believes that of course it is “prejudice” to try and avoid a diseased soul in favor of a healthy soul, but who would rationally argue against trying to avoid spiritual disease? Obviously no one will be able to permanently evade spiritual disease, but that hardly means that one must embrace both fully; how can anyone find fault in someone for learning from spiritual disease and hoping to grow away from it? Of course the will toward a healthy soul is a prejudice, of course it is selfish and exclusive, and of course that is precisely what every single person should and can attain! And what is the means of attaining this healthy spirit? The “science” of studying an indefinable soul and looking for spiritual fulfillment within a permanently impermanent self. Such a course of study must be called gay, for only with a sense of good humor can one throw oneself fully into this incredibly inexact science where reliability and validity and all the other foundations of any science do not exist.

10/10/07