I’m looking to turn my thesis from last semester into a publishable article. Here’s an abstract I’ve knocked together. Comments encouraged.
Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, exhorts us to recognise humanity’s place within nature and to stand “deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers,” (BGE 230) who have sought to separate the two. The foulest of such temptations, according to Nietzsche, are traditional notions of freedom which serve to underpin moral responsibility. In this paper I argue that Nietzsche’s engagement with freedom goes beyond the dismissal of these traditional notions and that, on the contrary, freedom remains a central concern of his ethical program. To this end, I explicate Nietzsche’s conception of freedom through two contemporary accounts, representative of two distinct traditions in the interpretation of Nietzsche: Rutherford’s (2011) Freedom as a philosophical ideal: Nietzsche and his antecedents and Pippin’s (2010) How to overcome oneself: Nietzsche on freedom. Rutherford places Nietzsche within a neglected philosophical tradition which finds freedom in the creation of, and commitment to, self-given laws. In contrast, Pippin engages Nietzsche’s notion of self-overcoming, whereby to achieve freedom is to overcome not just the impositions of the external world, but those parts of ourselves, including past commitments, which prevent us from developing and exercising the full extent of our capacities. These two readings diverge in the attitude they advocate towards one’s past self and commitments. I argue that Pippin’s account, in highlighting the tension Nietzsche diagnoses within a free spirit, more faithfully represents Nietzsche’s views on freedom and thus informs how we come to grips with Nietzsche’s ethical program.