“Bound heart, free spirit.—When one binds one’s heart firmly and keeps it imprisoned, one can provide one’s spirit many freedoms: I have said that already once. But people do not believe me, provided that they do not already know it. . . .” - Nietzsche, BGE 87
What does Nietzsche mean here, by binding ones heart?
Perhaps he over associated love with sex, and thus thought such…
Or he thought all love was really lust…
Ultimately it may be accurate in that if one restricts love to a few they are free to harm others… in which case such i would think is a rather bad state of mind… though I imagine he though of it as more being free from having to be concerned or have anxiety in association to how people might feel in response to what one says or does… which i think that anxiety can be over come by other means then “giving up” as such i would see that.
I’ve always understood him to mean binding one’s heart (love) to the present moment, which ultimately means to love what is [fate] - a heart binded to its fate, to all and everything that is now the case, both good and bad, moment by passing moment.
The present moment is an elusive concept, as fleeting yet ever present as it is - but ultimately it’s one thing [it stands above time, in a sense]. To earnestly affirm [with love] the present moment is to affirm all of what was and what shall be [hence all of existence].
This one thing could also be called Fate - hence ‘amor fati’
If you asked that question of Nietzsche, face-to-face, how do you think he’d respond? Or if you came up with an interpretation of your own and presented it to him, how do you think he’d respond? I don’t think he’d be able to tell you exactly what he meant, but he might object to your interpretation. That’s the way poets and philosophers seem to me to be.
If someone takes emotion out of his life by binding his heart, wouldn’t that make him more objective in his search for knowledge and, therefore, open more avenues of learning?
If one removes an aspect even be it emotions then how would one be able to learn of that aspect? Is satisfaction an emotion, or happiness, or contentment? I would think they are required for action and decision making to some extent… but then that does bring up an interesting question did Nietzsche mean love or emotion by his use of “heart”?
The key is in the words following: “…and keeps it imprisoned.” By heart, I suspect Nietzsche means passion(s), drives. Why ought one to imprison one’s passions? Because by doing so, “one can provide one’s spirit many freedoms.” This isn’t asceticism, though: Nietzsche intends not that we turn away from our heart to pursue our spirit; just the opposite, in fact. He intends that we sublimate our passions, and discharge them spiritually. Nietzsche demands of us much heart, an overabundance of passion. Christianity wants the same, that we free our spirit, but by way of an impoverishment of heart. By impoverishing our passions, by letting them whither, we can more easily exert ourselves spiritually – for we will be uninhibited by passion; however, such a spiritual exertion is nothing compared to what the truly great man can achieve, the truly passionate one – whose passions are bound and sublimated. This is also what I take Nietzsche to mean by the claim that to become better, we must also become more evil. By evil, he means passionate; for what, to Christianity, could be more evil than the passions? It is harder to permit the spirit great freedom for the man with much heart, but if he can do so – the true philosopher – he will be truly great, and truly free.
In his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Walter Kaufmann draws a parallel between Nietzsche’s “sublimieren” – translated as “sublimating” – and Hegel’s “aufheben”, which Hegel endows with several meanings. For Hegel, the concept means both preserving and cancelling, but also lifting up. It is the same with Nietzsche’s sublimation. Thus, Nietzsche wants us to both preserve and cancel our passions, “bind our heart”, but what that means exactly cannot be properly understood without also understanding sublimation as a “lifting up.” Consequently, while we keep our heart imprisoned, we must also lift it up, sublimate it, and exert its force spiritually. Sublimation, then, is never a repression, but an ascension.
It might be useful, at this point, to consider a subsequent aphorism, 97: “What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.” The great man that exerts his spirit without an abundance of heart, without a sublimation of that abundance, is only ever an actor of that ideal – nothing more. And this is what Nietzsche sees: with impoverished, withering passions, with hollow hearts, men striving to be spiritual, but always in vain, always only as actors.
“I have said that already once. But people do not believe me, provided that they do not already know it. . . .”
It is true, Nietzsche has expressed this sentiment consistently throughout his corpus. His trouble with Socrates, I take it, is that Socrates approached philosophy by turning away from his instincts. The philosophers of the future must do just the opposite.
If we have the ears for it, as Nietzsche says, we can find this idea everywhere. A few aphorisms later, 120: “Sensuality often makes the growth of love too fast, so that the root remains weak and easy to rip out.” By binding our heart, our sensuality, by controlling it and “keeping it imprisoned” – that is, by letting it grow slowly, with patience --, we can cultivate a strength of passion, of love, that will serve as the fertile ground out of which the highest spirituality may grow. In short: it is the sublimation of passion that philosophy demands of us, that all art requires. Art and philosophy are certainly easier for the passionless man, but such art, such philosophy, is merely an act of its own ideal.
Of course, one must always remember why Nietzsche writes aphoristically. An aphorism is incapable of admitting of only one meaning. Like a metaphor, placed into different contexts, the aphorism yields different implications. Indeed, one may extract from it, as Nietzsche says, whatever one puts in. To this extent, I suggest reading the collection of aphorisms in BGE with an ear for sublimation. And then again, with an ear for something altogether different. This is perhaps the only way to read Nietzsche properly – and most certainly what he means be demanding of us that we read him slowly. If, for example, we substitute sublimation for self-overcoming, another principal integral to Nietzsche’s thought, we get an entirely new meaning from – but one fundamentally connected to – what has been discussed above. If we understand all drives as manifestations of the will to power, as Nietzsche would have us do, then we can see that both heart and spirit are but two faces of the one fundamental force, i.e., will to power. Thus, by binding our heart to free our spirit, the will to power is forgoing one manifestation, as passion, for another: spirit. Nietzsche, of course, ranks spirit above passion, and does so overtly and consistently throughout all of his writings, making any claims that he wants man a beast, or that his philosophy is fundamentally irrationalist, completely absurd. Consider the following passage.
“Nature, not Manu, distinguishes the pre-eminently spiritual ones, those who are pre-eminently strong in muscle and temperament, and those, the third type, who excel neither in one respect nor in the other, the mediocre ones – the last as the great majority, the first as the elite.”
[The Antichrist, 57].
Thus, spirit ranks above strength in muscle and temperament – instinct, passion. However, both are still merely manifestations of the one drive, the will to power. Consequently, when we bind our heart, our passion, to exert our spirit, our reason, we are overcoming will to power as instinctual strength for will to power as spiritual strength. In a phrase: self-overcoming. One can see rather easily, too, that self-overcoming is a concept intimately connected with sublimation. The aphorism admits of both these meanings, and surely of others still. This is the wonder of Nietzsche.
Indeed, because he never only means one thing.
Hopefully I’ve done your topic some justice, FC.
Perhaps indeed.
Maybe… but how does one take emotion out of his life? How does one bind his heart in this way? I think that we cannot decide to not feel, and I dont think Nietzsche was recommending opiates here.
That is an interesting interpretation, but I am struggling with it a bit. I am tempted to go for this explanation:
I was just never used to interpret the word ‘‘heart’’ in this way. Perhaps due a difference of the times.
Taking this (which seems the same as Abstracts) as the interpretation to work with, I would agree with your subsequent explanations and would think that matter has been clarified.
But as you and LizRose make clear there is room for more interpretation, and I find none of the three presented here implausible.
What sense, if I may ask, does Nietzsche’s use of the word give you?
The concept of preserving and cancelling makes perfect sense, the whole thing in this light seems exactly the same as some of the buddhist ideas of ridding the self of bad desires. The point is that in order to preserve the good one must cancel the bad… to preserve or cleanse one must destroy…and perhaps finally add or strengthen the good emotions.
I can see how one might say that but it seems to be on the basis that the spiritual cannot be achieved…and what if the spiritual is an acting…in otherwords a matter of perception as is taught in many practices? Or perhaps one should further ask what is not acting, in which case what is the need of the distinction?
I don’t know that one could say socrates turned away from his instincts…one could say that thinking is an instinct. Perhaps rather he looked in and understood his instincts, which is what the future philosophers need to do, to understand the inner self and conquer it in so far as such is good.
This was the exact question I asked myself, and what made me ask the question here.
I think you may very well be right, especially since the substequent argumentation you base on the attribution of passion, with a strong sexual connotation, to the heart, leads to revealing insights on the two types of thinkers/artists you distinguish.
It is just that I am used to a different meaning of the word heart - perhaps I should actually think about adapting this, and think of the heart more in terms of sexual passion. Extended periods of study on oriental philosophy have led me to asttribute softer qualities to the heart, and the sexual passions to the sexual organs. But I find myself now drawn to your interpretation, which may very well be what Nietzsche means.
IDK I would link the heart to all forms of feeling emotion. but it is likely largely related to it…simply in a physical nature to the sexual, as indeed pumping the one eyed monster pumps or alters blood flow and thus heart related stuff…BUt that makes me wonder is the heart more related to the sexual for the man then the woman?
I think you guys are going off on a trip of your own when you confine the definition of ‘passion’ to mean sexual passion. Passion is any strong emotion toward any number of things. But lel’s say N. meant sexual passion–and he says to bind that sexual passion. I agree with w-m, and should have said it myself, doesn’t ‘binding’ imply ‘control’–a ‘reining in’–of the strong emotions that are ‘passions?’
And if you can accomplish that, you’re able to use that energy to explore the many other aspects of human consciousness.
w-m, I’m not sure that this isn’t part of asceticism, though, since religious asceticism certainly involves the sublimation of physical passions. Doesn’t a non-drinking alcoholic ‘sublimate’ his addiction and turn his energy toward different, equally obsessive, pursuits, once he stops drinking and can do so?
Poetry and literature are ‘lasting’ (classic) if their interpretations can change over time while still remaining valid. That’s why I took w-m’s advice and am reading the aphorisms as poetry. It’s pretty slow going, but I’m finding it extremely more satisfying.
You’re probably correct in that, though I get the impression Nietzsche was opposing sexual passion to spiritual passion in the discussed aphorism.
To put it succinctly, yes.
Hm, I think Nietzsche intends something different with his use of sublimation than what he sees in the religious ascetic. The religious ascetic has labeled his passions evil and useless – things to be turned away from, condemned, buried. On the contrary, Nietzsche demands of us that we cultivate our passions, that we elevate them. The process appears similar, the product appears identical – but the careful psychologist is able to expose the differences, as Nietzsche would have it.
Indeed, it’s far, far slower as well as far, far more satisfying. It is also the way Nietzsche intended to be read, and so only by doing so will we be able to appreciate fully the scope of his thought.
From the preface to his Dawn:
[size=90]
A book like this, a problem like this, is in no hurry; we both, I just as much as my book, are friends of lento. It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading: – in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste - a malicious taste, perhaps? - no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is ‘in a hurry’. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow - it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But precisely for this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of ‘work’, that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to ‘get everything done’ at once, including every old or new book:- this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers…My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well![/size]
I think one should read everything that way…Looking for all possible meanings as if it is poetry…after a while one starts reading that way faster.
w-m, If Nietzsche meant this:
as you interpret him, then I either disagree with him or with you, particularly in what I’ve underlined. I’d say a religious ascetic–no matter what religion–who renounces worldly pleasures does so knowing exactly what they are and what they mean–s/he recognizes the power of human passions which makes renouncing them more difficult and, therefore, more freeing for the soul.
I’m not very far into the aphorisms as I’m also reading Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. I’m reading them both on-line, which is automatically slow-going for me. I much prefer books.
The heart on the one hand and the mind/spirit/intellect (Geist) on the other correspond to Jung’s Feeling and Thinking functions, respectively, about which he wrote:
“Feeling is […] also [i.e., like Thinking] a kind of Judging, which however is distinct from intellectual judgment [i.e., from Thinking] insofar as it occurs not with a view to establishing a conceptual coherency, but with a view to a first of all subjective accepting or rejecting.” (Jung, Psychological Types, chapter XI, section 22, my translation.)
And in the same section, he said that the accepting or rejecting was done on the basis of whether the object of perception in question brought pleasure or displeasure. So binding one’s heart firmly and keeping it imprisoned means keeping oneself from being swayed by pleasure or displeasure. What Nietzsche’s suggesting is that one can then provide one’s mind the freedom to accept conceptual coherencies, and reject conceptual incoherencies, no matter how pleasurable the latter or displeasurable the former may be!
Accepting conceptual coherence is pleasurable though…a more productive pleasure.
True. However, that pleasure is of a different order—a meta-pleasure, so to say.
One that is learned, perhaps if more people saw that and sought it it would be come conditioned and eventually it would become genetically natural…like the pleasure of orgasm.