Nietzsche’s Convictions
about Convictions
by
Tao Ruspoli
The objectives of this paper are 1) to briefly examine Kierkegaard’s views on unconditional commitments 2) to examine Nietzsche’s views on brief habits and will to power and to see how these can function as a critique of Kierkegaard and finally 3) to see if we can extend this critique to Christianity as a whole.
At the risk of oversimplifying his position, let us briefly summarize Kierkegaard’s notion of the self and why it requires an unconditional commitment. Kierkegaard offered a way of life that he considered to be the only alternative to "despair". "A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity." Despair, he said, can be of three different types. One can be in despair by "being unconscious of having a self" This would be someone who denied his inherent duality (an insomniac, in Kierkegaardian terms). Or, one could "not [want] in despair to be oneself." This would be to deny one nature in favor of the other. The Greeks, for example, downplayed the importance of the body, and regarded the soul as the true self. Finally, one could find despair in the form of "wanting in despair to be oneself". This means realizing the importance of balancing one’s two natures, but the fact that one searches for the balance in one’s self, which has not yet been defined, leads to an imbalance that leads "all the more deeply into a deeper despair."
Kierkegaard then proposes that the only escape from despair lies in defining the self through something outside the self. Out of this comes the idea of a "defining commitment", which is elaborated in his "dialectical lyric", Fear and Trembling. Once identity is achieved, "knighthood" is reached. Kierkegaard says in Fear and Trembling that "[t]he knight will then, in the first place, have the strength to concentrate the whole of his life’s content and the meaning of reality in a single wish" Kierkegaard thinks that the only way of attaining a unity and equilibrium of the disparate natures of man ("the infinite and the finite...the temporal and the eternal...freedom and necessity.") is to devote one’s entire existence to a single commitment. This commitment provides a man with a stable (infinite) identity (as "the man committed to such and such") while at the same time keeping him tied to the changing (temporal) aspects of the world (since the "such and such" is not supposed to be abstract but real and therefore vulnerable). The important thing for Kierkegaard is that the "Knight" maintains faith in the object of his commitment through its day to day changes. Only thus is the commitment able to provide lasting meaning. ("for the movement of faith must be made continually on the strength of the absurd, though in such a way, be it noted, that one does not lose finitude but gains it...")
In order to understand Nietzsche’s critique of this view, it will first be necessary to elucidate his notion of "will to Power" as Heidegger sets forth in his essay, "The word of Nietzsche: God is Dead"** . Heidegger says that for Nietzsche, the essence of life lies in this concept ("for Nietzsche...the "will to power" is thus the fundamental characteristic of ‘life’.") "Will to Power" is understood as a constant striving for growth for its own sake--a constant overcoming. Therefore, all aspects of life that are "preserved", or maintained, are done so merely in the service of "enhancement", or growth. Everything that is merely preserved for Nietzsche, says Heidegger, is already in a state of decay.
In an aphorism in The Gay Science entitled "Brief Habits", Nietzsche explains the fact that his "habits" (i.e. "dishes, ideas, human beings, cities, poems, music, doctrines," etc.) are not something to be clung to once they are no longer useful to him. Instead, he says that once something’s "time is up", there is no reason to stay with it. In terms of preservation and enhancement we can see that once a habit is no longer being preserved in order to enhance, it is no longer useful. In other words, when a habit’s "time is up", it means that it has done its job in pushing forward growth, or enhancement.
We now finally in a position to understand what is wrong with Kierkegaard’s views according to Nietzsche. To put it bluntly: they stunt growth and stand in opposition to will to power. If we replace the word commitment with conviction, we can easily understand Nietzsche’s distaste for unconditional commitments. In The Anti-Christ Nietzsche says,
"Grand passion uses and uses up convictions, it does not submit to them--it knows itself sovereign...the man of faith, the ‘believer’ of every sort is necessarily a dependent man-such as cannot out of himself posit ends at all...conviction is the backbone of the man of conviction. Not to see many things..."
The idea of an unconditional commitment is abhorrent to Nietzsche insofar as it represents the opposite of a brief habit. In the first sentence of the passage above, we see that Nietzsche believes that convictions have to be like brief habits; they have to be "used up". The term "used up" indicates that the conviction had a purpose in helping the believer grow, but that its purpose did not extend beyond that. In other words, once this purpose is fulfilled, the conviction is no longer useful. The second sentence presents the notions of dependence, or lack of freedom. However, in this context, freedom does not mean the freedom to choose, but the freedom to grow. We see this by the fact that the "dependent" man cannot "posit ends". To posit ends, as Heidegger points out, is an inherent ingredient in the will to power-- otherwise known as the will to will or the to will to grow. Therefore the dependent man is not free to grow. When Nietzsche says "conviction is the backbone of conviction", he is merely saying that the conviction, not the will to power, is that which holds a man together--that which guides his existence. And if a conviction is a man’s backbone, it cannot be "used up", and therefore again stands in opposition to will to power.
All this goes to show that a man with a Kierkegaardian unconditional commitment is not living in service of will to power. The Knight is committed to his particular commitment, not to growth, and as we saw above, the two are not compatible.
This, we shall now see, can be applied not only to Kierkegaard’s views on individual commitments, but to western civilizations relation to Christianity as a whole. If we again use conviction as synonymous with commitment, mankind, according to Nietzsche, has had an unhealthy "unconditional commitment" to Christianity. For Christianity, by its very nature (we shall soon see why), cannot be a brief habit and therefore it serves to stunt the growth of an entire culture. In other words, what unconditional commitments do to harm individuals, Christianity has done to harm those who use it as a foundation.
The reader will certainly ask why it is that Christianity cannot be a brief habit. Why did Christianity take so long to "overcome"? In answering this question, we get to the key difference between a brief habit and an unconditional commitment, for it is not the case that the only difference between the two is that one lasts longer than the other.
Kierkegaard acknowledges that one can encounter what becomes one’s unconditional commitment by chance. However, once the commitment has become part of the "knight’s" life, it is no longer something contingent and therefore substitutable. On the contrary, the commitment becomes a necessary aspect in the definition of the individual. In other words, as a defining commitment it forces the "knight" to view every other aspect of his life, including previous commitments, in terms of this present, defining commitment. Therefore, the loss of the commitment cannot be taken lightly--it means the loss of one’s identity. In this sense, the unconditional commitment excludes the possibility of other commitments.
On the other hand, although a brief habit shares with the unconditional commitment the sense that it gives meaning to one’s life ("I always believe that here is something that will give me lasting satisfaction--brief habits, to, have this faith of passion, this faith in eternity..."), they do not have this aspect of necessity to one’s life. In other words, both unconditional commitments and brief habits share the sense of infinity and eternity, but they differ on the important idea that whereas unconditional commitments go from being contingent to being necessary, brief habits don’t seem to make this leap.
This is why Nietzsche proclaims that the "death of God", or the fact that Christianity is no longer an option in our age, is only an unhappy occurrence for those who are stuck in unconditional commitments (or those who require convictions as backbones). For those who are used to brief habits, on the other hand, the news is good--it represents the possibility of new opportunities for growth, something that Christianity has halted for too long. It is important to note, as Heidegger does, that "‘God is Dead’ has nothing in common with the opinions of those who are merely standing about and talking confusedly, who ‘do not believe in God’" The death of god means the end of an era of unconditional commitment and the birth of a time when brief habits are allowed.
Nietzsche says that "we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead,’ as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonition, expectation." Again, the use of the word "free" in "free spirits" is interesting. This context again shows that freedom is not a freedom of the will, where will means choice. Instead, it means freedom to grow and freedom to partake in those activities in life which allow for growth--i.e. brief habits.
One question remains to be answered: what is the difference between Kierkegaard’s unconditional commitment and Nietzsche’s view that we must constantly be growing? In other words, couldn’t one say that Nietzsche has an unconditional commitment to growth, to the will to power? There is a strong case to be made for this, especially as it relates to western man as a group. After all, all events in history, according to Nietzsche, can be seen in terms of their function in the will to power (just like for Kierkegaard, all events leading up to the unconditional commitment are seen in terms of that commitment). However, it is hard to tell if the will to power gives meaning to life in the same way an unconditional commitment can. But, alas, to answer this question would require another essay, so I will stop writing. Until next time!
Feb 20, 1996