Nietzsche as Free Spirit and New Philosopher

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Nietzsche as Free Spirit and New Philosopher

In the second chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche develops a fragmented portrait of a character type to which he refers as the "free spirit." Throughout the rest of Beyond Good and Evil, he expands on this portrait and connects it with another type, the "new philosopher," which he connects with the type of the free spirit in a specific (although complex) way. Nietzsche conceptualizes himself, as I will show, as both a "free spirit" and as a "new philosopher."

Nietzsche spends a great deal of time describing the characteristics of both of these types. The central characteristic of the complex characterization of the free spirit is freedom - although Nietzsche conceptualizes this freedom in a non-traditional manner: it is not a political freedom, and it is certainly not democratic. In fact, this freedom "is for the very few" and for the "very strong" (Nietzsche 29). Independence is something for which one has to test oneself, argues Nietzsche, and if one "comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize" (Nietzsche 40, 29). The characteristics of the free spirit described by Nietzsche throughout the book are characteristics that are uncommon among humanity: the free spirits are subtle and have "the art of nuances"; they are "extra-moral" and "immoralists" - that is, they do not bind themselves to the conventional beliefs about morality in which most people place their faith (Nietzsche 31, 32).

The primary characteristics of the free spirit, however, elucidate this type in a specific way that denies that the free spirit is merely a rare person. Nietzsche's characterization of free spirits de...

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...nally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life..."; "Perhaps he himself [the new philosopher] must have been" the eleven things which Nietzsche describes as important aspects of the new philosopher's education (Nietzsche Preface, 36, 211). Other examples are present in the work, but these will suffice to show that this work is of an experimental nature.

In the end, Nietzsche is not advocating a new dogma. Beyond Good and Evil is an explanation and a philosophical argument, but it is also an experiment, a creative attempt at a method of interpreting the world. Like other free spirits and new philosophers - if any have arrived yet - Nietzsche has liberated from the prejudices of previous philosophers that led into dogmatism.

References

Nietzsche, Friederich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1966.

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