Nietzsche's Therapeutic Teaching by Horst Hutter;Eli Friedland;

Author:Horst Hutter;Eli Friedland; [Friedland;, Horst Hutter;Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441107725
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2019-11-23T06:00:00+00:00

Daybreak: Free Spirit as Olympian or Sage

In Daybreak, the “view from above” is central to Nietzsche’s account of the new “dawn” that he hopes will bring to a close the species’ metaphysical “night.” We can see this in two important claims he makes in this text. Nietzsche claims that science is motivated by the “exaltation” or “elevation” that free spirits derive from sacrificing humanity on the altar of knowledge. Knowledge, he asserts, is a prize that justifies this sacrifice. In this sense, he believes that the passion for knowledge entails an Olympian attitude toward humanity: free-spirited philosophers delight in the suffering they cause by pursuing their passion for knowledge. Second, Nietzsche praises their intellectual courage to assume the sage’s view from above and see nature without metaphysical and moral illusions. In this context, he explicitly draws on the ancient sage’s “view from above” as a “spiritual exercise” or cognitive device for reframing nature as an object that elicits and warrants “joy.” By adopting the sage’s view from above, he suggests, they take a “generous” view of nature, affirming it as a whole rather than morally condemning it on the basis of the sufferings of its parts.

In Daybreak, then Nietzsche attempts to resolve the tension between truth and life. This resolution takes the following form: science or truth might prove fatal for those whose ethical and existential orientation is anchored in metaphysical convictions and hopes, but free spirits can make the pursuit of truth a passion that elevates them above distress so that they can enjoy nature as a spectacle. In other words, he recognizes science as a fatality for those wedded to metaphysical errors and illusions (e.g., teleology), but as the pathway to reclaiming joy in the spectacle of nature for the free spirit.51 Yet clearly Nietzsche cannot derive this philosophical joy in nature simply from identifying or reporting new scientific explanations of natural phenomena. Science alone cannot transform the naturalist’s emotional or affective orientation toward life. In Human, All Too Human, as we have seen, Nietzsche claims that the postmetaphysical, “disenchanted” view of nature might liberate free spirits from the burden of the prospective passions of desire and fear. However, this salutary transformation, he observes, hinges on a person’s “temperament.”52

In Daybreak, he now emends and develops his account of science and its relationship to philosophical passions. Nietzsche emends this claim by suggesting that science not only liberates free spirits from certain passions, but also that it satisfies certain kinds of passions, particularly a certain kind of joy or delight. Nietzsche develops this account by showing more clearly how science or “physics” only facilitates this transformation if it is mediated by certain kinds of spiritual exercises. It is not merely free spirits’ temperament that determines the impact of science on their emotional order, but also these exercises. In Daybreak, Nietzsche implies that an Olympian or sage-like “view from above” is required to take joy in nature.

Here his conception of this “view from above” wavers between Stoicism’s untroubled, serene spectatorship based

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