Is Nietzsche a Determinist?

Okay, here’s the deal. They’re not opposites. The last thing N would do is to conceive of them as opposites. He is constantly admonishing us for this. But it does depend on what you want out of the question.

Briefly, my answer, like N’s is couched this way:

All epistemic questions boil down to moral ones.

This question is usually, eventually, a moral one.

It assumes that we are asking if we are free to make our own moral decisions, or if those decisions are not decisions at all, but determined.

We don’t use our “minds”, exclusively to make these decisions.

Okay - our minds are not as much in charge as the Bible tells us. Those decisions aren’t as “mental” as we may think. Put in terms of “mind”, we are actually more “determined” than freewillers say - but not by God or the Big Bang - but by our entire “organism”. The paradox here is that we usually separate mind, body and soul. That’s a mistake. That may be what Imp is on about - if it is, then I agree with him.

The pertinent nexus is not mind/soul - N is not reacting to the scientific zeitgeist, as omar claims, but more to Plato and Descartes. Descartes may have established subjectivism, but N established that the subject isn’t what Descartes thought it was. “I think therefore I am” gives a lot more credit than is due to the thinking thing that Descartes “discovered”. It elevates the mind/soul to the seat of our connection to God.

Think of N’s position as entirely a reaction to this. The Cartesian model is entirely religious. Nietzsche’s is entirely materialist. The Eternal Return itself is a reaction to Kant, however. Instead of a universal dictum - act as if every act is universal law - which is a concept frozen in time, act as if everything you do will be repeated - a dictum that puts us back into time, and refers to the self, and not to “everyone”. It’s not his most successful idea, but it does serve a purpose - it’s about each of us, and not about all of us.

3 Times:

I think that to understand Nietzsche and other philosophers one has to understand the influences that inform his ideas. “Will to power” is for example an evolution of Schopenhauer’s “Will”, another metaphysical construct, believe it or not. Schopenhauer, of course, was eventually “overcome” by Nietzsche, but like new temples which are built on top of older pagan shrines, he used the thought of Schopenhauer as a fundation for his philosophy.
Schopenhauer’s idea of determinism was basically like Nietzsche’s, an attempt to have his cake and eat it too. He says:
“Because everything in nature is at once appearance and thing in itself…it is consequently suceptible to a twofold explanation, a physical and a metaphysical. The physical explanation is always in termsa of cause and the metaphysical in terms of will.”(Thing Itself and Appearance)

Schopenhauer wrote in the midst of materialism as a world view. Materialism was a treath not only to religion but also to philosophy as it used to be. Schopenhauer, I see, as adefender of the philosophical narrative, that is, Schopenhauer’s insistence is that metaphysics is not obsolete and the physical not enough to explain the being of Nature. Nietzsche may attack this defense of metaphysics but has to engage metaphysics very often. A lot of times, like in Daybreak and Human All Too Human, he basically has to destroy the very possibility of being taken seriously, at the start of his books. The first few aphorism, if accepted, should lead to the reader closing the book. He is mining, going underground, just as Schopenhauer, going beyond the surface, appearance, the physical, to bring us the metaphysical. Nietzsche already admits that this must be a presupposition and he does not intend to prove the physical reality of his findings. You are free to accept the presupposition, the metaphysics, or reject it as beyond our reach to actually know.

Same essay from Schopenhauer:
“Strictly speaking, therefore, the degree and tendency of a man’s intelligence and the constitution of his moral character could perhaps be traced back to purely physical causes,”
This is the view that Materialism has taken and which he believes is not enough. He doesn’t deny determinism, but is trying to reconcille, or absorb this materialist determinism into his philosophy.

“Metaphysically, on the other hand, the same man would have to be explained as the apparitional form of his own, utterly free and primal will, which has created for itself the intellect appropiate to it; so that all his actions, however necessarly they may be the result of his character in conflict with the motivations acting on him at any given time, and however necessarly these again may arise as a consequence of his corporeity, are nonetheless to be attributed wholly to him.”

Though we are determined, the determinism is not from outside of us, but within. We do as we do because of causes, yes, but these causes are not impersonal. At one point the trace for causes reaches the will and this will, though a determinant, is wholly ourselves. At that point, it is no longer who your parents were, what was the air temperature that day, or what you had to eat, but simply what is the character of your will, or your individual presentation of the will, the thing in itself. We are all affected by physical causes, our biology for example, but as twin studies have shown the materialist cannot have the last word because a person can be biologically the same and still retain the possibility or “freedom” to be her own woman. She is not determined completely by her genes, nor by her enviroment. Education is another determinant but again one which cannot tell us the entire story, because we cannot produce doctors at will…a problem that even the greeks experienced.
And so, Schopenhauer proposes that like a finger-print, each person is unique. That we are determined, but determined by our individuality, which is an expression of the Thing in itself. Sounds too much like the ol’ “soul”? True. And this might have been one of the reasons why Nietzsche eventually disavowed him. In the final analysis Schopenhauer was not denying determinism, but that there is a physical and a metaphysical determinism, and that you could not predict, for example, the future actions of an individual without full knowledge of the physical causes and the metaphysical will.

here i think it would be appropriate to invoke perspectivism here, as i’m sure most of us would agree there is a degree to which any man is free, but within the limits of his body, which in many ways represents his prison

thought itself is a prison - thus nietzsche urged us to rise above ourselves and our thoughts, else one further imprisons himself and his will

there are perspectives from which we are more or less free, and others from which we find ourselves almost entirely at the mercy of nature’s whims and circumstance

nietzsche emphasized his notion of will (to power), which in his case encompasses a whole lot more than simple choice- indeed his aim is to reduce everything to this will- but he’s surely no ‘determinist’ in the matter, nor do i think he is properly labeled a materialist either

compatibilist in its most liberal and broad interpretation may be the best we can do to pin a label on nietzsche - labels in general don’t easily stick to a thinker like him

labels have a tendency to oversimplify things

I quote Nietzsche in my website:

The misconception that many carry is that you are either a passive observer of your actions and the forces determining them (however much an illusion of control is upheld) or you control your own actions and override those forces which would otherwise determine them.

This is a false dichotomy. ‘Will’, as I interpret Nietzsche, is simply what becomes of a causal force when one is that causal force (l’effect c’est moi).

Imagine it this way: there are a myriad of things that determine our behavior. There’s the environment, our genes, what we ate for breakfast, our upbringing, our current mood and psychological states, etc. When listing these factors, we ought to include our own will. Indeed, it is a determining factor. What the will is, ultimately, may be a number of things - material processes in the brain, the power of the soul, whatever - but it is ‘will’ in virtue of our being whatever it is, that factor among the list of factors that go towards determining our behavior.

It is free, not in the sense that it is uncaused, that it’s influence comes from a void, but in that it has the power to exact its influence on our behavior. It still has to share this influence with all other factors, for it is not a trumping power that silences these other factors, but insofar as it can exert its influence, it is free, and the greater its influence, the more free.

So it is ‘will’ because it is us, and it is free because we act as cause over our behavior.

I have a problem with people saying that factors determine our behavior. It’s misleading. It sounds as if these factors are overpowering us from doing what we really want. It assumes an underlying ‘us’ with a will which sustains a degree of freedom even though it is overpowered or limited by the external forces of nature. It creates a ditchotomy between ‘us’ and nature working against ‘us’. This is just not what determinism says. It says these natural external factors determine (or produce) ‘us’ first of all, and our behavior indirectly through ‘us’. ‘Us’ is not affected by nature. It is an effect of nature. There is no dichotomy between nature and us. Nature does not work against us. Rather, nature works through us.

So if I wanted to fly and gravity keeps me down, is that not nature working against me?

You wanting to fly is nature working through you. You are not separate from nature.

I can accept the phrase ‘nature works against me’ as being meaningful when it’s a figure of speech, but I think taken literally it implies a dichotomy between ‘me’ and nature and this I do not think is right. To be literally true, it necessarily requires that ‘me’ be something participating in nature, but not be an effect of nature…not be created by nature…not to have come about through the workings of nature.

There has to be some distinction. Otherwise, I am everything. The Moon, the Sun, the closest galaxy, you, are all me.

I agree that my wanting to fly is nature working through me, but the fact that any attempt to do so (short of hopping on a plane) will fail indicates that nature (a part of it) works against me.

I don’t think this follows. It seems as if it should follow, but only because there is an equivocation with the word ‘nature.’ By nature I mean the stuff that everything is made up of. Sure, there are manifestations of energy in the form of a moon, or a sun, but all these things are interconnected, and fundamentally one thing. I am not the moon and the sun, but I, like the moon and the sun, am a manifestation (for lack of a better word) of this one principle stuff in time in space, speed, and all that. The distinction is not something substantially fundamental, and when I say that I am nature, and nature is me, or that nature works through me, I don’t mean that I am all of nature in all of it’s manifestations; just one manifestation of this stuff that makes up everything.

I think of nature like a mold of play dough that goes about changes. The shapes at the surface differ from other shapes on the surface, but it wouldn’t be meaningful to say that the play dough is affecting these shapes at the surface.

This isn’t very clear, I understand. It’s because it’s not very clear in mind. I have an intuition about this matter, and my words are failing at precisely translating the intuitions.

Then there must be other manifestations. Those other manifestations can work against the one which is me.

My problem with saying ‘these other things work against me’ is what the phrase possibly connotes. It could be taken as saying that these other things limit a capacity that doesn’t exist…doesn’t exist precisely because I, the whole of me (meaning my desires, my mind, what my mind thinks) is a shape at the surface of the play dough. It could also mean that these other things limit the desires of something else, and with this i have no problem, but this line of thought is often times lead to the conclusion that there’s a degree of free will despite external forces working against one’s capacity to will freely.

Limiting a capacity might just mean it doesn’t exist. For example, I want to move forward but there is a wall in my way. One could say the wall limits my capacity to move forward - because without it I would certain have the capacity to move forward - but one could also say that I don’t have the capacity to move forward - because the wall prevents me.

When we talk about some part of nature working against our will (say to fly), it could certainly be interpreted as “I don’t have the capacity to fly” (which is probably a more intuitive way of putting it), but it doesn’t preclude my ability to at least attempt it, which is equivalent to exerting the power of my will towards it. To talk about gravity working against my will is just one way to describe the reasons for which my will failed to be put into action. To describe it as the lack of a capacity to fly is another.

There’s a difference between free will, which stipulates that we have the capacity to cause things while in nature all the while without being caused, and what I call ‘unhindered will’ which refers to the capacity to satisfy some desire. The latter works within a deterministic paradigm, while the former doesn’t.

When I said “…a capacity that doesn’t exist,” I was speaking of free will. I think, when speaking of nature limiting us, we can only meaningfully speak of our capacity to carry out some desire we have, i.e., unhindered will. It doesn’t make sense to say that nature limits our free will, granting the fact that we’re a part of nature precludes free will in the first place.

I’m in full agreement with this. The ‘freedom’ of the will should not connote the idea that the will is uncaused, but that the will has a certain power to affect the world, and that this power is its own.

The most basic negation of free will is the observation that we are not free to will what we choose to will.
Our will is what determines us. It is the aspect in which we are the least free.

Well-said, Jake.

nonsense

you just equated human nature with animal nature

human nature is animal nature plus a will, one whose power is present but limited, and in the many is often veiled by thought and feeling

nietzsche’s real target in his attack on free will was the pious christian interpretation of the idea, which makes everyone responsible (and thus blamable) for every thought, feeling, inclination, and action that emerges from their organism

‘free’ is a perspective, and self-awareness is the ground of that freedom - one can only be free when he is aware that he is free

for instance, will is not to be equated with desire - it is one’s cognizance of desire that grants him willpower to act or not act on that desire depending on its source and prudence

but do not take my useage of ‘free’ any further than intended, please

e.g. i am not free to add a few extra inches to my stature, no matter how strongly i will it - this is no argument against my will

And are humans not animals?

Agreed.

But Jake is also correct.

We need to introduce a conception of “motive” to reconcile the two views. The usual conception of ego, or personality, is that it resides somehow in our minds. It resides in our wills. Animals have this, have motive. Just like humans do.

That is entirely your own conception. Nietzsche did not think that animals are without will.

Indeed, it would at best be an argument against your freedom of height.

:laughing:

are we not herein discussing ‘free’ will, jake?

yes, i know i know, everything is will, i get it

but i speak of nietzsche’s conception of human freedom, which is inherent to his notion of overcoming oneself, of the tightrope to the superman

there is some notion of individual freedom present here

and it involves the phrase i borrowed to wear as a username - it involves willing a single thing again and again

do you know what that single thing might be, jake?

… are you still with me jake?

or are you, too, entirely oblivious to nietzsche’s spiritual depths