Abstract
This chapter turns directly to the notion of freedom, attending to the psychological type that Nietzsche takes Montaigne to incarnate—the “free spirit.” For Montaigne, freedom is the avoidance of servitude—whether servitude to other people or to one’s own passions or habits. Freedom also extends to the free use of the understanding, possible only for those able to overcome pernicious habits of thought promoted by fear, superstition, and custom. Montaigne understands freedom to denote both “free living” and “free thinking.” The chapter shows that Nietzsche draws inspiration from both aspects of Montaigne as he displays the free spirit’s development. At each stage of its development, the free spirit takes up a challenge that Montaigne has anticipated and engaged within the Essais. Here the analysis attends to the sustained conversation with Montaigne that Nietzsche conducts in the lesser-known works of his “middle period,” as well as in contemporaneous notebook entries.
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- 1.
Vivarelli (1994, 79) observes that “while Montaigne may be regarded as Nietzsche’s model of the free spirit , Pascal is the greater and more honest opponent, since he did not accept religion out of custom or inertia, but rather decided on its behalf in a lengthy thought-process”.
- 2.
Noting the relevance of HH 276, Vivarelli (1994, 89–90) suggests connections between Pensées §§815, 983, 193, 35, 634 (Lafuma numbering) and Nietzsche’s contrast between free and bound spirits. Her point, however, is not so much to stress Pascal’s exemplarity for Nietzsche, but rather to illuminate the way in which so much of HH’s thinking about bound spirits (as well as that of Pascal on the “ordinary Christian”) reads as an elaboration of Montaigne’s dictum “[B] We are Christians by the same title that we are Perigordians or Germans” (III.12.445/394).
- 3.
“Vivarelli has established this convincingly,” Pippin (2010, 10–20) writes, appealing to her use of the “1876 Nachlass written in preparation for Human, All Too Human and thereafter.” As far as I can tell, neither the 1876 notebooks nor Vivarelli’s article give much support to this claim. On the honnête homme, Vivarelli (1994, 92) actually stresses the contrast between Pascal, who says “this universal quality is the only one I like” (Pensées §647), and Nietzsche, who “places the accent on the loss of the individual, not of the universal qualities”.
- 4.
KSA 8:19[77].348. I have reproduced the admirable renderings of J. Harvey Lomax , appearing in Löwith (1997, 28–29).
- 5.
If there were any serious rival to Montaigne for this position, it would be not Pascal but Voltaire—as Vivarelli (1994, 82) implies by observing the dedication of the 1878 edition of HH “to the memory of Voltaire on the celebration of the anniversary of his death , 30 May 1778.” But she concludes—rightly, I think—that “the actual model for the free spirit of these years, however, is Montaigne”.
- 6.
Emerson (1876b, 164) comments that Montaigne’s “French freedom runs into grossness; but he has anticipated all censure by the bounty of his confessions.” At I.21.106/92, Montaigne describes his freedom as “[C] being very free (estant si libre)”.
- 7.
Nietzsche has a similarly keen eye for nonobvious threats to freedom. As Shaw (2007, 31) astutely observes, Nietzsche “repeatedly expresses the proto-Weberian fear that the gravest threats to freedom will be those with which we unreflectively cooperate rather than those whose coercive power is obvious to us and provokes our resistance”.
- 8.
Later in this passage, Montaigne compares the inability of such “active” people to be still to “a stone that has started falling, and that does not stop until it comes to rest.” Vivarelli (1994, 91) notes the kinship of this passage to HH 283’s “Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics” and the corresponding 1876 notebook entry: “It is the misfortune of the people that their activity is always a little unreasonable: they roll on as unconsciously as the stone falls” (KSA 8:16[40].293–294).
- 9.
Compare this passage from early in the Essais: “We are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear , desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be” (I.3.15/9–10).
- 10.
Though he rejects ceremony in the home, Montaigne does not deny its necessity for states: “In all the functions that serve the welfare of society there is always such a universal admixture of ceremony and outward show that the best and most effective part of a government consists in these externals” (III.8.930/862-863). On this point, see Starobinski (1985, 299–300) and Heitsch (2000, 47).
- 11.
Vivarelli (1994, 93) finds a parallel between this passage of the Essais and HH 291 (“Caution of the free spirit ”), in which Nietzsche claims that the free spirit “will be happy to take only the corner of an experience; he does not love things in the whole breadth and prolixity of their folds; for he does not want to get wrapped up in them.” She proceeds to connect the “refined heroism” of HH 291 with Montaigne’s behavior as the mayor of Bordeaux and his praise of a “gliding, obscure, and quiet life” (III.10.1021/951).
- 12.
- 13.
Vivarelli (1994, 88) connects this passage to an 1876 notebook entry in which Nietzsche similarly uses the image of mother’s milk: “If it is supposed to be useful first to place a person on the breast of the nurse religion and let him drink the milk of belief, so that he only later and gradually gets accustomed to the bread and meat of knowledge: thus the time seems to me too long, given the brevity of human life” (KSA 8:18[11].317).
- 14.
Emerson (1876b, 172). Emerson’s use of Montaigne, as Marchi (1994, 108) notes, helps him “to arrive at his own intellectual independence.” Though Marchi observes that Montaigne is too complex to be reduced to advocacy of a position called “skepticism,” he nonetheless finds an important contrast between the two, holding that Emerson “demanded a more finalized understanding of issues” than Montaigne did.
- 15.
For evidence suggesting Nietzsche is inspired by Montaigne on precisely this point, consider an 1884 notebook entry (KSA 11:26[291].227) that transcribes the following passage from the Essais: “[C] The laws of conscience , which we say are born of nature, are born of custom . Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction” (I.23.115/100).
- 16.
- 17.
Vivarelli (1994, 95) ingeniously shows the deep concurrence of Montaigne and Nietzsche on this point. She does so by juxtaposing Montaigne’s telling of the story of Diagoras with HH 255. To the claim that the votive offerings and tablets of those who escaped shipwreck, preserved in the temple, are good evidence in favor of the gods’ care for human affairs, Diagoras responded: “[C] Those who were drowned, in much greater number, are not portrayed here” (I.11.44/34). Nietzsche seems to pick this up directly from Montaigne: “It as with shipwrecked people who make vows: later, in the temple, one does not see the votive tablets of those who perished” (HH 255).
- 18.
“Husbanding” is Frame’s translation of the verb mesnager; Screech opts for “restraining.” On the multiple connotations of the term, and its deployment at different places in the Essais, see Green (2012, 189–198).
- 19.
Here I am developing a line of thought found at Starobinski (1985, 109–110).
- 20.
Compare BGE 43’s conjecture on what the philosopher of the future might say to himself: “‘My judgment is my judgment’: no one else is easily entitled to it”.
- 21.
Marchi (1994, 146) observes that “Montaigne first charges ‘coustume’ with negative connotations, slowly strips them away, then restores to it a positive sense”.
- 22.
On this point, my interpretation differs somewhat from Green (2012, 27), which claims that Montaigne’s practice of free thinking “is anchored in submission rather than subversion.” I do not think that his practice can easily be pinned down to either category.
- 23.
Robin Small (2005, 101) plausibly connects the theme of “brief habits ” to Emerson’s rejection of “foolish consistency” in “Self-Reliance.” Even stronger, I think, is the connection to Montaigne.
- 24.
This is a point well made by Meyer (2006), though my account is entirely independent of his. Paul Franco (2011, 207) also clearly recognizes the importance of the developmental aspect of Nietzsche’s thinking about the free spirit , though my account differs from his in that I distinguish five stages, whereas he counts only three. (Franco’s three stages correspond to my second, third, and fifth.)
- 25.
Since Nietzsche grants this stage so much importance, I have chosen to describe it as the first phase of the free spirit . I recognize, of course, that one might proceed differently, choosing to regard this phase as the pre-history of the free spirit and reserving the first stage of the free spirit proper for the “great separation ” (my second phase). While very little hangs on this, I note in passing that my procedure has the advantage of linking the first phase to the first metamorphosis of the spirit in Z—the camel . My second phase most clearly corresponds to Z’s lion; the third phase is avian rather than leonine. Do the last two phases correspond to Z’s child ? They might, insofar as they combine the innocence and playfulness of the free spirit . Alternatively, one might interpret Z’s child as pointing beyond the free spirit.
- 26.
This passage suggests what Nietzsche would say about the claim that “only the committed practitioner of x can really understand x.” If there is any truth to the claim, it is that to understand x from the inside, one must have once been a committed practitioner of x.
- 27.
This aphorism further notes that to become such a person, “a good temperament would be necessary—a secure, mild, and basically cheerful soul ” whose expressions “would have a neither a growling tone nor sullenness—those familiar bothersome traits of old dogs and men who have lain a long time chained up.” Vivarelli (1994, 97–98) conjectures that Nietzsche borrows the image of chained-up dogs from “Of Solitude” (compare I.39.240/213).
- 28.
Compare GS 2 on the difference between the “distress that philosophizes, as is the case with all sick thinkers,” on the one hand, and the philosophizing that proceeds from riches and strength, from the “voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the heaven of concepts”.
- 29.
On an increase in “emotional heat” as a sign of a “very strong and spreading free-thinking,” see HH 232. And compare GS 309: “I often look back in wrath at the most beautiful things that could not hold me—because they could not hold me.”.
- 30.
“Self-Reliance,” in Emerson (1876a, 55–56).
- 31.
Pascal, Pensées §201 (Lafuma numbering; §206 in the Brunschvicg numbering).
- 32.
KSA 8:41[31].588 (HHIIUF 397). Compare WS 16.
- 33.
- 34.
For more observations on the importance of these things for Nietzsche, connecting them both to works on medicine by Nietzsche’s contemporaries and to his reading of Montaigne, see Dahlkvist (2014).
- 35.
KSA 8:41[2].584 (HHIIUF 393) and KSA 8:42[48].604 (HHIIUF 413).
- 36.
As Vivarelli (1994, 101) notes, “even Nietzsche’s predilection for the Xenophontic Socrates , which is typical for the phase of Human, All Too Human, is mediated by Montaigne”.
- 37.
Letter of 27 October 1887 (KSB 8:178).
- 38.
On this point, see Vivarelli (1994, 80).
- 39.
The danger is real enough for Montaigne as well. In the chapter “Of the Art of Discussion,” he writes: “As our mind ( esprit ) is strengthened by communication with vigorous and orderly minds, so it is impossible to say how much it loses and degenerates by our continual association and frequentation with mean and sickly minds. There is no contagion that spreads like that one” (III.8.923/855).
- 40.
For an argument (drawing heavily on WS 71) that Nietzsche routinely employs dissimulation in order “to prevent the mob, the populi, and the political parties from grasping the full meaning of his texts,” see Heitsch (2000, 117–118).
- 41.
KSA 13:11[65].32.
- 42.
Vivarelli (1994, 101) suggests that this passage from Montaigne could serve as a kind of “motto” for the “human, all-too-human wisdom ” of Nietzsche.
- 43.
Compare D Pr 4: “But there is no doubt that a ‘thou shalt ’ still speaks to us too, that we too still obey a stern law set over us—and this is the last moral law which can make itself audible even to us, which even we know how to live, in this if in anything we too are still men of conscience ”.
- 44.
Compare KSA 12:1[123].39-40 (=WP 911), which holds that if happiness is identified with contemplative relaxation and virtue becomes a means to such happiness, “then one has to become master over virtue, too”.
- 45.
Compare BGE 44: he is “grateful even to need and vacillating sickness because they always rid us from some rule and its ‘prejudice,’ grateful to god, devil, sheep and worm in us.” And D 206: the free spirit will “keep moving from place to place for just as long as any sign of slavery seems to threaten”.
- 46.
Vivarelli (1994) emphasizes the importance of travel for Montaigne as a means to the end of spiritual independence (see also Regosin 1977, 165–169). Citing a passage from “Of Experience”—“I am so sick for freedom, that if anyone should forbid me access to some corner of the Indies, I should live distinctly less comfortably. And as long as I find earth or air open elsewhere, I shall not lurk in any place where I have to hide” (III.13.1072/999-1000)—she observes (1994, 87) that “the psychology of the free spirit for Montaigne and Nietzsche coincides with that of traveling.” (For evidence of Nietzsche’s cosmopolitanism during this period, she cites KSA 8:17[55].306 which urges “contemplative free-spirits” to “lift all the barriers that stand in the way of a coming-together of human beings.”) As Heitsch (2000, 8) observes, the “intellectual curiosity and flexibility” of the cosmopolitan is “typical of Nietzsche’s good European”.
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Miner, R. (2017). The Free Spirit. In: Nietzsche and Montaigne. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66745-4_5
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