Philosophy across the curriculum: 1 a democratic nietzschean pedagogy

Educational Theory

Volumn 46, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 511-524

  Sassone, Leslie A ^a  

^a ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040531403     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1996.00511.x     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. It is not important for this work that a firm distinction be made between philosophy and theory; I use the term philosophy because I am not willing to leave behind the entire history of Western philosophy just because its foundations have been shown to be cracked or nonexistent. Since 1980, in Educational Theory, which is representative of the leading work in the field, there have been five pieces with Nietzsche as a central focus. James W. Hillesheim, "Suffering and Self-cultivation: The Case of Nietzsche" Educational Theory no. 2 Spring 36, (1986);
2. Eliyahu Rosenow, "Nietzsche's Educational Dynamite" Educational Theory 39, no. 4 (Fall 1989);
3. James W. Hillesheim, "Nietzschean Images of Self-overcoming: Response to Rosenow" Educational Theory 40, no. 2 (Spring 1990);
4. Nimrod Aloni, "The Three Pedagogical Dimensions of Nietzsche's Philosophy" Educational Theory 39, no. 4 (Fall 1989
5. Martin Simons, "Montessori, Superman, and Catwoman," Educational Theory 38, no. 3 (Summer 1988). The 1983-1994 cumulative index, appearing in the Winter 1994 edition of Educational Theory, lists Louis Goldman, "The Trial of Socrates: A Review Essay"Educational Theory () as an entry under Nietzsche.1989
6. Those anti-democratic sentiments in Nietzsche that are based on what seem to be prejudices against particular groups, such as women, will not be considered within this text. It is possible that these are Nietzschean provocations to awaken the spirit of his times. For an explanation of Nietzsche's childhood as a basis for his views of women, see Alice Miller, The Untouched Key (New York: Anchor Books, 1990).
7. Nietzsche's first textual offerings, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy in Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kauffman (1872: reprint, New York: Vintage, 1967) and his Basel lectures from 1871, "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions," were composed when Nietzsche was in his twenties. As Heller notes, "the young man of hardly twenty-five was appointed Professor without even a doctorate to his name"; see Erich Heller, The Importance of Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), 57. Can Nietzsche's early anti-democratic perspectives be seen as a justification for his own early success? 1988
8. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Future of our Educational Institutions" in The Complete Works or Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar E. Levy, trans. J.M. Kennedy (1871; reprint, Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, This article will be referred to as Future with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations.1910), 34
9. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (1873-1876; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, AH Too Human, trans. R.F. Hollingdale (1878; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). This book will be referred to as Human with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations. Nietzsche lost his hope for the genius through his own illness. In the preface to "Assorted Opinions and Maxims" when offering his "precepts of health" he recognized that he was "no longer a romantic""I turned my perspective around"#2 and #5. Though democratic Nietzsche may be found throughout his texts, it is the middle period of writings such as "Assorted Opinions and Maxims" and "The Wanderer and his Shadow," both in Human, All too Human; Daybreak, trans. RJ. Hollingdale (1881; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
11. The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1882; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1974)
12. the last text, Ecce Homo, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1889; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1969)
13. that for the most part illustrate this position. These three books will be referred to as Daybreak, Gay Science, and Ecce Homo with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations.
14. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1883; reprint, New York: Penguin, This book will be referred to as Zarathustra with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations. 1954), 12
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1886; reprint, New York: Vintage, ), #257. This book will be referred to as Beyond, with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations. 1989
16. Nietzsche as anti-democratic statist can be found throughout his texts.
17. In a discussion that anticipates contemporary criticism of the mass media as a (counter)-educational force, Nietzsche notes that the tendencies of expansion and minimization of education are synthesized in the activity of journalism. "The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a rule"Future, 41.
18. Although the term democratic may necessarily lead to the discourse of politics, it does not do so here. As stated in the main text, Nietzsche was an anti-democratic statist opposed to the political systems of his time. Yet there is a democratic Nietzschean reading that sides with life-participation not government. This distinction can be clarified through Althusser's definitions of Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses; Louis Althusser, "Ideology and State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 127-86. Both the RSA and the ISA's are controlled/ perpetuated by ideology. Ideological controls are Political [my emphasis]. Politics with a capital P is all social transformative activity; education is (at least) Political. But there is a distinction between ideology and political acts that directly attempt to alter policies/structures in the RSA. Conversely, politics with a small p [my emphasis], the "common" connotative definition of the word, defines activities in and around the RSA, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, politics is the use of state apparatuses to promote some form of collective life or other. As the RSA functions "at least ultimately""by violence" (Althusser, "Ideology and State Apparatuses," 143), Nietzsche's democratic pedagogy is not political. "What is needed is not a forcible redistribution but a gradual transformation of mind: the sense of justice must grow greater in everyone, the instinct for violence weaker," Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, #452.
19. Democracy here is a social rather than a strictly political concept (for example, majority rule, a competitive party system). A democratic Nietzsche is democratic because, in his discourse, each person is equally worthy of individualization, each human life has its own importance and, although needs will vary among individuals, no individuals prima facie deserve better treatment from others because they are "superior" according to some external standard. There are obvious similarities of democratic methods in John Dewey's conception of a democratic way of life underlying formal procedures of political democracy.
20. Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and his Shadow," 6.
21. By pedagogy I mean teaching practices. I retain the use of the term despite agreeing with Alice Miller's views on "poisonous pedagogy"; Alice Miller, For Your Own Good (New York: The Noonday Press, Nietzschean philosophical pedagogy fosters the (observation) (analysis) needed to lose illusions by seeing their constraints. This is the opposite of "poisonous pedagogy." 1990), 9
22. Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1988), 101.
23. Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13.
24. Georges Bataille, Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), 9.
25. We are always "in" a subject position, since subject position is attributed to a discourse.
26. For example: "Our moral judgments and evaluations too are only images and fantasies based on a physiological process unknown to us, a kind of acquired language for designating certain nervous stimuli... that all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text," Nietzsche, Daybreak, #119.
27. While Nietzsche might agree with facques Lacan that "the subject sets itself up as operating, as human, as I, from the moment the symbolic system appears" the self that Nietzschean discourse creates is not only Lacan's fictive self of the symbolic order. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II, The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1988), 52
28. Mike Gane, ed. Baudrillard Live (London: Routledge, It is noteworthy that Jean Baudrillard and Nietzsche reach the same conclusions about the importance of amor fati despite this difference about psychoanalysis. A brief discussion of amor fati appears toward the end of this text. 1993), 45
29. Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and his Shadow,"#6
30. For example: "To know, e.g., that one has a nervous system (- but no 'soul'-) is still the privilege of the best informed"; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), #229.
31. For example: "One is bound to admit that most people see the closest things of all very badly and very rarely pay heed to them"; Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and his Shadow,"#6.
32. The term individualization appears within this text with different usages determined by the contexts in which the term is used. These different usages play off the slide between individualization as a state of being and individualization as a norm.
33. For example: "We are always only in our own company" Nietzsche, Gay Science, #166;
34. We cannot look around our own corner," Nietzsche, Gay Science, #374; and "
35. There is nothing whatever that is impersonal" Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #6.
36. For example: "The fact of our existing at all in this here-and-now must be the strongest incentive to us to live according to our own laws and standards," Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator" in Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 128. "Life...shouts at everyone of us: 'Be a man and do not follow me - but yourself! But yourself!'" Nietzsche, Gay Science, #99.
37. While is it imperative for Nietzsche that each create one's own values, this does not mean that there should not be constraints on the ways in which the creative process is configured. The process of individualization, for Nietzsche, would lead to a personality with sufficient self-love not to vent hatreds destructively against self or others. That is, though everything might be permitted in the construction of values, the destructive possibilities would not be actualized by one who has been individualized.
38. Nietzsche, Will to Power, #767.
39. For example: "What alone can our teaching be?- That no one gives a human being his qualities: not God, not society, not his parents or ancestors, not he himself... No one is accountable for existing at all, or of being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives"; Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R.J. Hoilingdale (1888; reprint, London: Penguin, 1990), 64.
40. For example: "Again and again transfor[m] the water into wine on one's own account," Nietzsche, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims,"#109.
41. For example: The dream, "content, form, duration, performer, spectator" is generative of the self by the self: "You are all this yourself!" Nietzsche, Daybreak, #128. According to Nietzsche, "what we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced 'actually,'" Nietzsche, Beyond. #193.
42. For example: "Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we require history, for the past continues to flow within us in a hundred waves; we ourselves are, indeed, nothing but that which at every moment we experience of this continued flowing," Nietzsche, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims"#223.
43. Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educatorquot; 129.
44. "Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors" Nietzsche, Gay Science, #283. For a discussion of Levi-Strauss's bricoleur, see Deena Weinstein and Michael A. Weinstein, Postmodern(ized) Simmel (New York: Routledge, 1993), 64.
45. Luce Irigarav, "Love Between Us" in Who Comes After the Subject, ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 171.
46. For example: "We have at any moment only the thought for which we have to hand the words," Nietzsche, Daybreak, #257
47. For example: "Take your own language seriously!" Nietzsche, Future, 48.
48. Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator" 187.
49. For example: "Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will" Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 172. "Listen... to the voice of the healthy body" Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 33.
50. Nietzsche, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims,"#279. "Wherever a deep discontent with existence becomes prevalent, it is the aftereffects of some great dietary mistake" Nietzsche, Gay Science, #134.
51. Nietzsche, Will to Power, #54.
52. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann(New York: Vintage, 1969), 119
53. For example: "Misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me... that is imperfect" yield the fruit of "a hundred backdoors through which" there is "escape from enduring habits," Nietzsche, Gay Science, #295
54. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 33.
55. Nietzsche introduces the term amor fati in Gay Science, #276.
56. Nietzsche, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims,"#396.
57. For a discussion of ressentiment see Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 36-40.
58. Reader, please note, this essay is hereby deconstructed: The principle of individualization must remain as the focal point of education. "The supreme principle of all education, that one should offer food only to him who hungers for it," Nietzsche, Daybreak, #195. "He who feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul: thus speaks wisdom," Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 22.