Nietzsche's Radicalization of Kant

Northeastern Political Science Association

Nietzsche's Radicalization of Kant Author(s): William W. Sokoloff Source: Polity, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 501-518 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877079 . Accessed: 07/09/2014 10:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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Polity * Volume 38, Number 4 * October 2006 (0 2006 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/06 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity

Nietzsche's of Kant*

$30.00

Radicalization

William W. Sokoloff Chapman University College, Santa Maria Valley Campus According to liberals and postmodernists, Nietzsche and Kant occupy opposing places on the theoretical spectrum. I challenge this assumption and argue that Nietzsche is working both with and against Kant in terms of his new morality Nietzsche's harsh rhetoric against Kant serves as a mask that, on closer examination, conceals similarities. Through an analysis of some of his texts, I demonstrate that Nietzsche works within a Kantian conception of moral autonomy in terms of two of his most provocative formulations:pathos of distance and law of life. Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment, moreover illustrates his commitment to Kantian assumptions about moral conduct. Bringing Kant and Nietzsche together yields a new image of autonomy that overcomes the sovereign subjectivitycentral to the Kantian conception.

Polity(2006) 38, 501-518. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300061 Keywords autonomy; experience; Kant; law; Nietzsche; pathos of distance; ressentiment

William W Sokoloff is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Chapman UniversityCollege, Santa Maria ValleyCampus. He has published in the American

Journalof PoliticalScience, PoliticalResearchQuarterly,Theory& Event,and Political Theory. He is currentlyworking on a book entitled Right of Resistance. He can be reached at [email protected].

Introduction Nietzschedoes not rejectmoralitybut re-figuresit beyond good and evil and alongside a Kantianconception of autonomy.'He does not stay within Kant's *The author thanks Amanda Roya Modesta-Keyhani, Nicholas Xenos, Susan Shell, Karen Zivi, E.C. Graf,O. Bradley Bassler, an anonymous Polity reviewer, and the editor for comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank the librarians at Whittier College for allowing me to use the library 1. Nietzsche citations refer to sections and not pages. I use the following abbreviations: GT= Birthof Tragedy,trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); UB = Unfashionable Observations, trans. Richard T Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); MA (I & II) = Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); M=Daybreak, trans. R. J.


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frameworkfor practicalreason but radicalizesit. This is clear in terms of his

of pathosof distance,andarticulation of a critiqueof ressentiment, presentation new foundation for ethical practice. Nietzsche's radicalization of Kant overcomes some of the shortcomings of his Prussian forefather and challenges the way Nietzsche has been received among liberal and postmodern political theorists.2 For liberals, Nietzsche is an irrational,sadistic, and undemocratic political thinker of dubious worth. For postmodernists, Nietzsche is valuable because he does away with transcendental ground and frees the subject from conventional morality Both camps have clouded his significance for rethinking autonomy because they view him as rejecting law. My essay scrambles the association of Nietzsche with postmodernism and Kantwith liberal thought (and opens a space between and slightly beyond the two sides) insofar as it demonstrates the profound affinity between Kant and Nietzsche on the question of autonomy Interrogatingautonomy in Nietzsche's writings (with Kant in the background) could help to forge a dialogue between liberal and postmodernist readers of his work. It also raises the stakes of what it means to be an autonomous moral agent. Nietzsche does not conceive of the human as an amoral blonde beast but as a historically constructed free agent capable of autonomous action. The persistent claim that Nietzsche breaks with Kant is not only inaccurate in this regard but prevents a fundamental aspect of Nietzsche's thought from being clarified. In the words of Nancy, reading Kant in Nietzsche is "indispensable."'3

Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); FW= The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:Vintage Books, 1974); JGB= Beyond Good and Evil, trans. WalterKaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); GM= On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York:Vintage Books, 1989); GD = Twilightof the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York:Penguin Books, 1968); AC=Antichrist, trans. R. J. Hollindale (New York: Penguin Books, 1968); EH=Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); PTG=Philosophy in the TragicAge of the Greeks, trans. MarianneCowan (Washington D.C.:Regnery Publishing, 1962); WM= Will to Power, trans. WalterKaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York:Vintage Books, 1968); WL= "OnTruth and Lie in a Non-MoralSense" in Philosophy and Truth:Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the early 1870s, ed and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1979); Z= Thus Spoke Zarathustra,trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York:Penguin Books, 1961). 2. Postmodernists find Nietzsche appealing because he criticizes sovereign subjectivity and embraces becoming. They find Kant unappealing because he subjugates the empirical world to the transcendental realm. For the relationship between Nietzsche and postmodernism, see Lawrence J. Hateb, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics (Chicago: Open Court, 1995) and Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988). Liberals find Kant appealing because he defends rights-based conceptions of politics. See Rawls, "KantianConstructivism in Moral Theory" The Journal of Philosophy 77 (September 1980). They find Nietzsche unappealing for the reasons listed above. See also Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony,and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Jilrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA:The MITPress, 1987) for interpretations that emphasize Nietzsche's corrosive effect on moral discourse. 3. Jean-Luc Nancy "OurProbity!On Truth in the Moral Sense in Nietzsche,"'trans. Peter Connor, in Looking after Nietzsche, ed. Laurence A. Rickels (Albany: State University of New York Press), 80.


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The reason why commentators overlook the connection between Kant and Nietzsche is simple.4 The closest Nietzsche came to directly working on Kantwas an abandoned 1868 project called "ZurTeleologie" After that, Nietzsche criticizes Kantian precepts calling him, among other things, a "moral fanatic,' "scarecrow," "philosopher for civil servants,' "moralist, "cunning Christian,' and "deformed conceptual cripple" (WM I 95; WM I 127; GD "Expeditions" 29; AC 10; GD "Reason" 6; GD "Germans" 7). Nietzsche never misses an opportunity to rail against the "horriblescholasticism" of Kant (GD "Expeditions" 49). Despite the polemical rhetoric, Nietzsche's relation to Kant is more complicated than these quotes from his later writings suggest.5 As Deleuze states, "there is, in Nietzsche, not only a Kantian heritage, but a half-avowed, half-hidden, rivalry.6 We can understand Nietzsche in a more profound way if we entertain the possibility that he and Kant are doing something similar, if to different degrees. Indeed, we see a radicalization of Kant taking place in Nietzsche, especially in terms of his re-conceptualization of human autonomy Nietzsche's concept of autonomy radicalizes Kant because it displaces sovereign subjectivity. After I examine Nietzsche's views on ressentiment, pathos of distance, and law, I contest Bernstein's and Connolly's readings of Nietzsche in order to make the case for Nietzschean autonomy Nietzschean autonomy overcomes the shortcomings of the Kantian version and re-positions Nietzsche's significance beyond both the liberal and postmodern interpretations of his work.

4. Even if Nietzsche's understanding of Kant was filtered through Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation (1844), F A. Lange's History of Materialism (1866) and Kuno Fischer's Kant (1866), many authors prematurely shy away from the connection. That Nietzsche denounces Kant is accepted at face value. For David Owen, Nietzsche attacks Kant'sconception of morality;see "Nietzsche, Enlightenment and the Problem of Noble Ethics,' in Nietzsche's Futures, ed. John Lippett (London: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1999). Keith Ansell-Pearson opposes bringing Kant and Nietzsche together in "Nietzsche:A Radical Challenge to Political Theory;"Radical Philosophy 54 (Spring 1990). Ansell-Pearson also maintains that "Nietzsche's thinking on justice...runs counter to the entire modern tradition from Rousseau to Kant and Hegel"; see "Towardthe comedy of existence: On Nietzsche's new justice,"in The Fate of the New Nietzsche, ed. Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Aldershot, UK:Avebury Press, 1993). William E. Connolly places Kant and Nietzsche on opposite sides of the political spectrum. This is discussed later. In contrast to the tendency to separate Nietzsche and Kant, J. M. Bernstein discusses Kant and Nietzsche in terms of autonomy See '"Autonomyand Solitude," in Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (New York:Routledge, 1991). 5. It is untrue that Nietzsche rejects "the great Chinese of Koenigsberg" (JGB 210). In a spirit similar to Kant, Nietzsche maintains: "Tograsp the limits of reason-only this is truly philosophy" (AC 55). Recall "Kant'sjoke" in Gay Science: "Kantwanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of his soul. He wrote against the scholars in support of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people" (FW 193). 6. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York:Columbia University Press, 1983), 52. He also claims that "Nietzsche'srelation to Kant is like Marx'sto Hegel"; 89. This flip-flop comparison obscures the specificity of each relationship.


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Ressentiment: Feeling Crossing Itself Out A word that is interchangeable with slave morality, ressentiment is linked to a network of concepts in Genealogy, including suffering, guilt, bad conscience, debt, will, and meaninglessness.' This feeling is a problem that goes back to Untimely Meditations where Nietzsche claims that people can "bleed to death from a single experience, a single pain, particularly even from a single mild injustice, as from a tiny little cut" (UB "History" 1). With ressentiment in Genealogy he explores its conditions of possibility and its relation to the birth of moral categories. In the history essay, he avoids the question of subjects who want to bleed on others, display their wounds, and make others suffer. In Genealogy, he examines the impact ressentiment has on one's self-relation and on one's relations with others. Ressentiment is a feeling that collects in the body as well as in human consciousness. Although all sensations are linked to specific empirical events that take place at particular moments, this is not the case with ressentiment. It breaks the link between feeling and time. The memories of unpleasant events accumulate in the body and are felt as festering wounds. This has a profound impact on subjectivity In terms of one's relation with oneself, the immediate effect of ressentiment is self-hatred. Ressentiment also has an impact on one's relations with others. Once self-hatred runs its course, the self's feeling of distress is directed at others: "They make evildoers out of their friends, wives, children, and whoever else stands closest to them" (GM III 15). Mr. Ressentiment views others as evildoers because he wants someone to blame for his suffering: "Every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for his suffering... a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering" (GM III15). Nobles are hated and blamed by the slaves because they exceed norms and expose conformity as weakness. The superiority of nobles illuminates the mediocrity of slaves. That makes slaves suffer. Slaves congregate, herds form, and nobles are attacked. It is not the bird-carnivores who go on the rampage but little hungry lambs that devour birds of prey It is not nobles who are cruel but the followers of slave morality. Their wounds make them lash out at others. When slaves encounter others, they demand immediate recognition. Everythingmust conform to their mental schemas. Nietzsche adopts the perspective of the lamb and speaks: "Youshall be knowable, express your inner nature by clear and constant 7. For an interpretation of ressentiment, see Max Scheler's On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing, ed. Harold Bershady (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 116-43. For a variety of readings of ressentiment, see Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality:Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1994). For a discussion of the relationship between ressentiment and politics, see Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).


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signs-otherwise you are dangerous. We despise the secret and unrecognizable" (WM II 277). Nietzsche claims that "the actual physiological cause of ressentiment" is a "desire to deaden pain by means of affects" (GM III 15). With ressentiment, the body becomes its own enemy. Sensibility wages war against itself. Mr. Ressentiment is a prisoner of human sensibility, comparable not to the dog who chases its own tail but to the dog who bites it. Unable to forget and sublimate pain into creative activities that discharge it, slaves feel all events as insults and injuries: One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything-everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound. (EH "Wise"6) Getting over something depends on the capacity to embrace the unexpected turns of human experience. The failure to change in response to events that frustrateour expectations generates ressentiment: "Thewish to preserve oneself is the symptom of a condition of distress" (FW 349). Ressentiment is not only prone to infect the self who posits itself as a fixed identity but it gives birth to moral codes that sprout from wounded subjectivity. It propels the subject to create values from a defensive relation to the world: The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside:' what is "different:'what is "not me"; and this No is its creative deed. (GM I 10) Slave revolt in morality undermines the possibility of autonomous action because it internalizes the drive for outward expansion. Slaves cannot act. They want revenge. Nietzsche defines Mr. Ressentiment as one who "understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally selfdeprecating and humble" (GM I 10). Once self-denial reaches its breaking point, the stage is set for reactive attacks against perceived enemies. In contrast to the Kantian imperative of self-legislation, the slave receives his ground for action from an external source and then creates moral categories that value reactivity. Incapable of being the source of his own grounds for practice, objects determine his actions. He is only capable of "re-action."'8 8. It is instructive to recall Kant'sdefinition of heteronomy. Like ressentiment, heteronomy refers to instances when the will does not give itself the law but receives the ground for practice from an object. See Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 47.


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Pathos of Distance: Feeling is Not a Name Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment should not be viewed as a terminus but as a preparatory task. The outstanding question is how ressentiment can be overcome. Nietzsche does not appeal to the supersensible realm as the ground for practice to overcome ressentiment but presents the possibility of a non-reactive mode of human affectivity (pathos of distance) as the alternative. Pathos of distance is an aesthetic-affective dimension of experience that suspends the pull of ressentiment.' This feeling elevates the human above pathological determination but without severing the link to sensibility It moves Nietzsche closer to Kant and also paves the way for Nietzsche's turn to law. As early as 1873 in "OnTruthand Lie in an ExtramoralSense',"Nietzsche tries to articulate a feeling that would put the stability of the conceptual order permanently into question. The "Truthand Lie" essay, in this regard, is a critique of the concept in order to open a space for life in an extra-moral sense. Deconstructing the conceptual world was the first step to human liberation. Concepts, "graveyardof perceptions" (WL 2), prevent humans from feeling the uniqueness of life. They impose commonality on dissimilar entities in order to help the human cope with complexity through the "identification of the nonidentical."10 The world is given the illusion of comprehensibility through conceptual violence but becomes disenchanted in the process. Thinking in concepts may be impossible to totally escape but concepts nonetheless prevent humans from feeling the force of the unique. Panicked by incursions of otherness, clutching concepts as a way to assail it, the human is de-sensitized and prepared for battle. Out of fear, he imprisons the world in cognitive

9. Oliver Conolly in "Pity Tragedy and the Pathos of Distance" defines pathos of distance as "the painful distance that necessarily lies between my suffering and that of others"; in European Journal of Philosophy 6 (December 1998): 290. In Nietzsche and the Political, Conway states: "Thepathos of distance signifies an enhanced sensibility for, or attunement to, the order of rank that "naturally"informsthe rich plurality of human types" He continues: "The over-arching goal of his politics is to preserve the diminished pathos of distance that ensures the possibility of ethical life and moral development in late modernity" (New York: Routledge, 1997), 40, 47. In a more critical vein, Bernstein suggests that the pathos of distance is a "perpetual distancing of the self from itself that enforces solitude, mask, and irony";see '"Autonomyand Solitude,"'213. Interpretationsof pathos of distance can also be found in the work of Sarah Kofman and WernerHamacher. For the former,the metaphor of the abyss is a metaphor for pathos of distance; see Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor,trans. Duncan Large (Stanford:Stanford University Press), 20. For Hamacher, pathos of distance refers to a moment when "the will is no longer one with itself." For him, "individuality speaks from the undecidability between determination and indeterminacy thus from a 'pathos of distance'";see Werner Hamacher, Premises.:Essays on Philosophy and Literaturefrom Kant to Celan, trans. Peter Fenves (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1996), 121, 176. 10. Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor,36.


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compartments. Nietzsche contrasts "rationalman,' or Mr.Concept, with "intuitive man." Mr.Intuition Reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption-in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely when he suffers;he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrationalin sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. (WL 2) Mr. Intuition lives cheerfully. The external world does not suffer from the projection of rational forms, but remains a source of wonder because it has not been transformed into objects of knowledge. Intuitive man nonetheless suffers because he adopts a non-pragmatic approach to life. He is unable to learn from experience because he fails to calculate and base future actions on past ones. He trusts his feelings and he reaps the harvest of cheerfulness but he "keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch." However, what exactly does he feel? Nietzsche answers: "There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts" (WL 2). Nietzsche locates an expression for these intuitions in Beyond Good and Evil. Straining language to its limit, Nietzsche calls it "pathos of distance:" Everyenhancement of the type "man"has so farbeen the work of an aristocratic society-and it will be so again and again-a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other. Withoutthat pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata-when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down upon subjects and instrumentsand just as constantly practices obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance-that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up eitherthe craving for an ever widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching,more comprehensive states-in brief, simply the enhancement of the type "man' the continual "self-overcomingof man,' to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense. To be sure, one should not yield to humanitarian illusions about the origins of an aristocratic society (and thus of the presupposition of this enhancement of the type "man"):truth is hard." (JGB257) 11. Why is truth hard, as opposed to cheerful? As we shall see, pathos of distance is the condition of possibility of affirming new experiences that establishes its connection with the intuitions Nietzsche strains to name in 1873.


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Nietzsche distinguishes between two types of distance: "pathos of distance" and "that other, more mysterious pathos," one with distance within the soul itself. Pathos of distance grows out of the "ingrained difference between strata" and flourishes in aristocratic societies. That other "more mysterious pathos" facilitates continual self-overcoming. After introducing pathos of distance, Nietzsche goes on to point out the benefits and dangers of distance. At a time when differences between people were compromised by the demands of equality and social democracy, Nietzsche argues that re-establishing distances could hold the homogenizing tendencies of his age within proper limits.12A certain level of distance interruptsidentification and may even permit one to see something more objectively. And yet, Nietzsche realizes that distance isolates. In the chapter "The Free Spirit" in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche advises his reader "not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to see ever more below him-the danger of the flier" (JGB 41). Taken to its extreme, a self with too much distance is disengaged, irresponsible, and incapable of feeling. However, disavowing distance altogether risks compromising space between self and other. In pathos of distance, Nietzsche invents a feeling that avoids the pitfalls inherent to both distance and proximity. Distance need not imply sovereign mastery over one's environment; pathos is not identical with pathological determination and reactivity.As a feeling that signals engagement with world but without being determined by it, pathos of distance points to the possibility of an open-ended relation to one's self, other, and world. Hence, it generates receptivity and a sense of expectation. Pathos of distance, then, is an enhanced sensibility for the transience of life that allows the particularity of entities to appear. Proximity and concepts suffocate and grind down world and other. The possibility of experience is betrayed when we fail to recognize that we stand too close to someone or something, when we domesticate the particularity of entities with general formulas of cognition. The will to immediacy and drive for familiarityannihilates experience: Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. The latter would require more strength, more new is "morality."Hearing something 12. Even though Nietzsche criticizes equality and democracy, this does not necessarily mean he is an enemy of democracy As Wendy Brown notes, Nietzsche's critique of democracy may prevent liberal democracy from becoming self-satisfied, dogmatic, and reactive: "Nietzsche is the antidemocratic thinker whom democracy cannot live without"; see Politics out of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 137.


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embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well. When we hear another language we try involuntarily to form the sounds we hear into words that sound more familiar and more like home to us. (JGB 192) Whether it is with a new language or new music, projecting the familiar onto the unfamiliar is a tactic of domination. The yearning for comfort transforms the structural openness of the ear into a filtering device that homogenizes the nonidentical. Scratch the surface of the will to comfort and one finds panic that is linked to the need to contain the world. The new is a threat necessitating colonization and subjection. Anything that lacks a determinate place must be given one. Old images are projected onto new phenomenon in order to fend them off. The will to comfort makes one deaf and blind. For Nietzsche, we need "new eyes for the most distant things" and "new ears for new music" (AC Foreword). Distance, not the search for comfort, is the condition of possibility of experience because it allows the new to come forth. It cultivates openness and receptivity to otherness. Registering what is new and different in an impression depends on one's willingness to be transformed. In order to be transformed, one must cultivate the art of distance. This is the mark of one's strength: "Withthe strength of his spiritual eye and insight grows distance and, as it were, the space around man: his world becomes more profound; ever new stars, ever new riddles and images become visible for him" (JGB 57). Riddles are invisible and stars are unseen when the human grinds down experiences to fit pre-established schemas. Distance allows them to appear. In contrast to pathos of distance, ressentiment constitutes a subject ready for revenge. Revenge on others and on oneself is the result of the incapacity to affirm the existential pain that inescapably accompanies human experience. Operating on a register similar to Kantian respect, pathos of distance holds the subject in a state of suspension; it does not produce determinate action. This is clear in Nietzsche's ideal of nobility. Nobles are always one step above determination from empirical sources.13 This is why Nietzsche claims that nobles respect their enemies as opportunities for productive engagement. They are not determined to despise them. For nobles, enemies may give us a new way of seeing ourselves that can lead to self-overcoming. Slaves do not engage their enemies but pray for their untimely demise. For slaves, their enemy is evil because it is a source of discomfort. Mr.Ressentiment "has conceived 'the evil enemy,' 'the Evil One, and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves" (GM I 10). 13. Recall Kant'sconception of autonomy as non-empirically generated self-legislation. The closest Kant comes to devising an empirical basis for morality is the feeling of respect. For the paradoxical character of Kantian respect, see my "Kantand the Paradox of Respect,"American Journal of Political Science 45 (October 2001).


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If affirming one's enemies illustrates the noble capacity to rise above immediate stimuli, the incapacity to resist a stimulus is reactive, a symptom of "vulgarity"(GD "Germans"6). Filled with life and passion, nobles do not have to receive external affirmation because they do it spontaneously They are distant and distance announces the possibility of human freedom: "Forwhat is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility.That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life" (GD "Expeditions" 38). The preservation of the "distance which divides us" is not a formula for civil war but the condition for relations grounded on the art of "separatingwithout setting against one another" (EH "Clever"9).14 A community grounded on distance is a paradoxical conception only if one conceives of community as commonality Nietzsche replaces oppositional groupings grounded on ressentiment with non-oppositional relations in order to invent a community grounded on distance, not commonality: "Itis not how one soul approaches another but in how it distances itself from it that I recognize their affinity and relatedness" (MA II 251). The art of distance marks the quality of relations.15 Distance ruptures the drive for homogeneity, recognition, and identification. Distance also interrupts the cognitive colonization of the other. The quality of the relation with the other depends on the capacity to affirm the other as other, even if it threatens our identity As a non-reactive feeling, pathos of distance does not involve oppositional but affirmative relations: "Establish distances, but create no antitheses" (WM IV 891).16 And yet, these relations find their ground in separation. Pathos of distance is the "will to be oneself, to stand out" (GD "Expeditions"37). Standing out suspends the imperative of equality that grinds down differences between dissimilar entities. Nietzsche criticizes the instinct of homogenization in equality because he sees it as an attack on justice.17The call for equality is not neutral and innocent but conceals the desire for revenge. It lacks an appreciation of the "between;' the critical distance that lets entities be what they are. As a concept form, equality is a declaration of war that eradicates individual aspects

14. Jacques Derrida asks how a politics of separation could be founded that would not give in to proximity and identification. See Politics of Friendship,trans. George Collins (New York:Verso, 1997), 55, 65. 15. See Nietzsche's Zarathustra:"Mybrothers, I do not exhort you to love of your neighbor: I exhort you to love of the most distant" (Z I "Of Love of One's Neighbor"). 16. For how distance could be the condition for relation, see Maurice Blanchot's Friendship,trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). For Blanchot, our friends reserve "an infinitedistance, the fundamental separation on the basis of which what separates becomes relation";291. 17. For Nietzsche, equality endangers justice: "The doctrine of equality! But there exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the termination of justice.. .'Equality for equals, inequality for unequals'-that would be the true voice of justice.. .'Never make equal what is unequal'" (GD "Expeditions"48).


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and naturalizes mediocrity. This prevents the emergence of individuals who exceed common measures: a certain actual rendering similar of which the theory of "equal "Equality," is rights" only the expression, belongs essentially to decline: the chasm between man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out-that which I call pathos of distance-characterizes every strong age. The tension, the range between the extremes is today growing less and less-the extremes themselves are finally obliterated to the point of similarity. (GD "Expeditions"37) Equality is an attack on multiplicity and a symptom of decline that annihilates individuality. Sustaining the tension between extremes is necessary because it fosters difference. In this regard, Nietzsche's critique of equality is the affirmation of plurality.Whether this constitutes a rejection of democracy is discussed later. Nietzschean plurality requires one to stand out and be who one is. This requires courage: "No one any longer possesses today the courage to claim special privileges or the right to rule, the courage to feel a sense of reverence towards himself and towards his equals-the courage for a pathos of distance" (AC 43). Genealogy deepens Nietzsche's depiction of pathos of distance: The pathos of nobility and distance...the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a "below"-that is the origin of the antithesis "good" and "bad" (GM 12) The "good/evil" value antithesis sprouts from ressentiment; pathos of nobility and distance generates "good/bad" valuations. In the "good/evil" dichotomy, good is only the after-effect of a designation that labels someone evil. The denigration of the other is the basis for the elevation of the self. In the "good/bad" opposition, calling something good emerges independently Putting someone down is not the precondition for self-elevation. The distinction "good/bad" overcomes the oppositional morality of slaves ("good/evil") because nobles affirm their own critique as a source of pleasure: "Thesuperior spirit takes pleasure in the acts of tactlessness, arrogance, even hostility perpetuated against him" (MA I 339). Out of the feeling of distance, nobles create the "good/bad" value antithesis independently of all external grounds. It was not slaves who spontaneously created values: It was "the good" themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as


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good, that is, of the first rank. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values. (GM I 2) Nietzsche does not argue that nobles have free reign because they feel differently He connects pathos of distance to ethical obligations. First, nobles have a "readiness for great responsibilities" and "the affable protection and defense of whatever is misunderstood and slandered, whether it is a god or devil" (JGB 213). Second, noble philosophers have an obligation to the future: "The most comprehensive responsibility . .conscience for the over-all development of man" (JGB 61). Pathos of distance also disrupts instrumental relationships that perpetuate sovereign mastery and degrade others as objects: The higher ought not to degrade itself to the status of an instrument of the lower, the pathos of distance ought to keep their tasks eternally separate! They [nobles] alone are our warrantyfor the future, they alone are obligated for the future of man. (GM III 14) For Nietzsche, the future of human existence is threatened if nobles are degraded as tools. Kant also prohibits instrumental relationships.'" Both authors are concerned with human dignity, even if Nietzsche's opposition between nobles and slaves seems to undermine it. Treating humans as objects robs them of autonomy.19 It would be difficult to miss a certain resemblance between pathos of distance and Kantian respect. Pathos of distance is, among other things, a condition of possibility of experience, an imperative of individuality,a critique of equality, and an affirmation of value creation. It is a strange feeling because it de-constitutes the subject and generates receptivity.It is, moreover, a feeling of our "conclusive transitoriness" (M 49). On these points, pathos of distance is not equivalent to Kantian respect. And yet, both pathos of distance and respect require a certain distance from empirical reality and are potential antidotes for nihilism. For Kant, "Theprinciple of mutual love admonishes men constantly to come closer to one another; that of respect they owe one another, to keep themselves at a distance from one another."'20Nietzsche, in contrast to Kant, grounds distance on pathos, 18. For Kant, "all rational beings stand under the law that each of them is to treat himself and all others never merely as means but always at the same time as ends in themselves" Kant, Groundwork,41. 19. In Groundwork,Kant states: "In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity";42. Kant continues: "Autonomyis the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature";43. 20. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. MaryGregor (Cambridge, U.K.:Cambridge University Press, 1991), 244. The rest of the quote reads: "Should one of these great moral forces fail, 'then nothingness (immorality), with gaping throat, would drink up the whole kingdom of (moral) beings like a drop of water'"


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a mode of distinctly human embodiment that is more worldly than ethereal Kantian respect. Nietzsche's distinction between nobles/slaves (in contrast to Kant's more egalitarian tenor) may be one of the reasons why liberals embrace Kant and are reluctant to take Nietzsche seriously There is also evidence to suggest that there is something too ingrained about pathos of distance implying that it is passed down through the correct breeding habits of an ethical aristocracy Dismissing Nietzsche on these grounds may be understandable but it would nevertheless be a mistake. There is more evidence to suggest that pathos of distance is selfgenerated, not ingrained. It is what one feels as an autonomous agent. Nietzsche's apparent contempt for some of the core values of democratic culture, moreover, should not be construed as the rejection of democracy His critique of equality can actually strengthen democracy insofar as it incites, in the words of Wendy Brown, a "richer practice of democracy.'21Specifically, Nietzsche is a "useful interlocutor of democracy offering precisely the challenge that might lead democracy to 'climb' in the manner Nietzsche insisted was the sole purview of culture."22We should entertain the possibility that ressentiment is the real threat to democracy insofar as it prevents the type of independent thought and action that democracies depend on for political invention. Far from destroying democracy, Nietzsche might be able to keep us on the lookout for traces of ressentiment in the political sphere so that they can be identified, engaged, and negotiated politically. Nietzsche's own form of nineteenth-century ressentiment should not be mistaken for iron fist hostility for the demos. Pathos of distance is not a sickness triggered by democracy and aristocratic indifference to the suffering of the weak but an elevating sensibility that allows one to make distinctions (EH "The Case of Wagner"4). Pathos of distance is Nietzsche's alternative to ressentiment and is connected to his defense of autonomy.

Law of Life: A New Law Nietzsche has a profound interest in law that dates back to his writings from the 1870s and continues in his later work.23 In Daybreak, Nietzsche claims we 21. Brown, Politics out of History, 136. For Brown, "Liberal democracy rarely submits its cardinal values of mass equality and tolerance to interrogation without dismissing such challenges as antidemocratic"; 136. 22. Brown, Politics out of History,136. 23. In his unpublished notebooks dating from the time of UntimelyMeditations, Nietzsche claims that "Perishingand coming into being are governed by laws"; see Nietzsche, Unpublished Writingsfrom the period of Unfashionable Observations, trans. Richard T Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 103. In Philosophy in the TragicAge of the Greeks, Nietzsche praises Heraclitus because he saw the "teachingof law in becoming" (PTG8). In Birthof Tragedy,he refers to the "law of eternal justice" (GT 25).


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must "construct anew the laws of life and action" (M 453). At this point in his thinking, it was not clear what these laws of life and action would be. One possibility appears in Will to Power as the call for a law of critique. Nietzsche views this as the most sublime form of morality: "This demand for a critique of morality, as precisely your present form of morality, the sublimest form of morality"(WM II 399). The law demanding a critique of morality was incomplete because it lacked an affirmative dimension. He argues that only a law with a critical as well as an affirmative component could adequately ground moral practice. The reason for Nietzsche's hesitation is obvious. Given his critique of transcendental norms that suffocate the creaturely aspects of humanity, how could Nietzsche reconcile the demand for law with his own critique of the repressiveness lurking in law? After all, Nietzsche criticizes law getting out of control and negating expressions of life. Legal orders that prevent all struggle are "hostile to life" and "assassinate the future of man" (GM II 11). And yet, "law represents on earth...the struggle against the reactive feelings" (GOM II 11). Nietzsche does not reject law but nor does he praise it unreflectively. He has to invent a law that affirms life, battles reactive outbursts of ressentiment, and opens spaces of self-transformation. Nietzsche envisions this type of law in the concluding pages of Genealogy Similar to Kant's categorical imperative, Nietzsche's new law is not concerned with the result of action but with the principle for ethical conduct. Hitherto, the will grounded itself on ascetic ideals because it lacked meaning and purpose. Ascetic ideals give the will a goal in order to overcome the curse of meaninglessness, but ascetic ideals negate the possibility of worldly happiness and beauty Nietzsche does not turn the world right side up and provide new ground for the will in the realm of sensibility Grounding practical ethics in this way was still, as he states in an 1868 fragment "On Ethics'," "like a doctor who is merely combating symptoms."24Taking directives from the empirical world is incompatible with self-legislation and risks perpetuating ressentiment. If practice cannot ground itself in the empirical world, Nietzsche's critique of Christianity rules out transcendental solutions because they hold the human up to standards that devalue the worldliness of the human condition. Nietzsche's solution had to be non-empirical but without resulting in a loss of sensibility; non-transcendental but without breaking the link to law. Nietzsche's "law of life" bridges the gap between the empirical and transcendental realms and maintains them in a state of reciprocal tension; this 24. Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1 (Munich, Germany: Musarion Ausgabe, 1922), 404 [my translation].


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collision grounds practice. It calls for modes of action oriented to liberating the self: All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of selfovercoming: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the necessity of "selfovercoming" in the nature of life-the lawgiver himself eventually receives the call: "submit to the law you yourself proposed." (GM III27) This is not a way to disengage and secure one's identity against events that threaten to shake it but an experience of the self's contingency triggered over and over again through self-legislation.25 In contrast to the Kantian version, Nietzschean autonomy is not an experience of the self's sovereignty over the flux of the world. Rather, Nietzschean autonomy is the flux of the world transposed into the core of the self. Acting under the law of life, the will wills its non-identity to itself; it wills its transformation, disintegration, and reconstitution in ever changing forms. The law of life grounds practice but it also takes it away: 'An abysmally deep ground behind every ground, under every attempt to furnish 'grounds'" (JGB 289). Law of life names the need for a new mode of lawgiving based on autonomy. Or,as Nietzsche states in Daybreak: "Isubmit only to the law which I myself have given" (M 187). Nietzschean autonomy annihilates all grounds for conduct that are constituted on the basis of life-denying ideals. The lawgiver is placed in a realm free from violence to self and other that stems from reactivity,the search for permanence, and the will to comfort. This opens the possibility of a future beyond the horizon of ressentiment. In order to lay down the law of life, one must be autonomous; that is, free and distant from one's identity. Law of life is the key component to Nietzschean autonomy and consists of selflegislation, freedom, and willing the disintegration of the will. Although it shares the principle of universalizabilitywith Kant'scategorical imperative, it goes beyond Kant because agency conceived as sovereign subjectivity is dethroned by law of life. Nietzschean autonomy instills distance to oneself which perpetually displaces the subject conceived as master.Pathos of distance reinforces the loss of sovereign subjectivity and replaces it with a receptive, open, and non-reactive subject.

Nietzsche and Kant Even if Nietzsche ultimately goes beyond Kant insofar as he rejects sovereign subjectivity, Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment, defense of pathos of distance,

25. For Kant, "the dignity of humanity consists just in this capacity to give universal law, although with the condition of also being itself subject to this very lawgiving" Kant, Groundwork,46-47.


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and reflections on law add up to something similar to Kant'sreflections on law, autonomy,and will. As Nancy notes, "Tointroduce Kantinto Nietzsche is provocative or paradoxical only at a very superficial level."26The writings of Kant shifted philosophical activityaway from theoretical reason and toward practical reason. The question of freedom became the philosophical problem par excellence. Nietzsche clearly recognized both the importance of Kant'scontribution to moral philosophy in his turn to practical problems and pursued his own project by working both with and against his Prussian forerunner.Actively giving oneself a law is the highest principle of moralityand grounds the dignity of human beings for both Kant and Nietzsche. Given Nietzsche's Kantian framework for ethics, it is not surprisinghe claims Kant'swork led to "an infinitely deeper and more serious view of ethical Nietzsche views Kant's questions"(GT 19). In an 1872piece called "ThePhilosopher'," categorical imperative as a "virtueS'one of those "impossible demands" through which mankind "propagates itself.'27 Even if Kant's purification of will from the influence of anything sensible goes furtherthan in Nietzsche's work, both thinkers free the will from modes of contamination that render autonomy impossible.28 This is where my interpretation differs from Bernstein's in 'Autonomy and Solitude." Although he detects similarities between Kant's and Nietzsche's reflections on autonomy, he opposes the project of autonomy itself. This leads him to miss the complexity and richness of the Nietzschean version. For Bernstein, "Nietzsche'sradicalization of Kantianautonomy terminates in the worldless, deathin-life solitude of the philosopher-legislator.'29 He adds: "Nietzsche's formalism, like Kant's, demonstrates the emptiness of the moral will.'30By collapsing both positions, Bernstein obscures differences that complicate the threats he detects. Bernstein overstates the extent to which Nietzsche's view of autonomy isolates the will. Nietzsche's presentation of the dangers of distance adds a crucial dimension to his thinking on autonomy and saves it from the formalism and alienation Bernstein sees in Kant. Pathos of distance is not a feeling of alienation that "enforces solitude, mask, and Rather, it is a heightened receptivity that irony."31 one's to the connectedness world and results in a greater attunement accompanies to the realm of sensibility but without being pathologically determined by it. ContraBernstein, Nietzschean autonomy is not about solitude but rathera call to transform oneself and for non-reactive engagement with others.32 It is easy, but 26. Nancy "OurProbity!"80. 27. Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth,"The Philosopher," 136. 28. See William E. Connolly WhyIAm Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 164-66 for a discussion of the sacrifice of sensibility in Kant. 29. Bernstein, '"Autonomyand Solitude,"213-14. 30. Bernstein, 'Autonomy and Solitude,' 214. 31. Berstein, '"Autonomyof Solitude:' 213. 32. For accounts of Nietzsche that emphasize the individualistic dimensions of his thought, see Alexander Nehemas, Nietzsche, Life as Literature(Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1985) and


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ultimately incorrect, to read Nietzsche as a radical individualist, as someone who advocates a philosophy of solitude. Nietzsche criticizes modes of inter-subjectivity predicated on conformity and the denial of individuality. He does not reject community tout court. Nietzsche is the first to admit that distance threatens the possibility of community. And yet, distance is also the negative condition of its possibility. A community without distance between members is a cult; one with too much distance disintegrates. A Nietzschean community could exist, then, as the tension between imperatives to congregate and separate but without ever resting on either side. It would preserve a space for individuality and autonomous action but without forsaking engagement with others, even one's enemies.33 Taken together, autonomy and pathos of distance yield a more complicated and appealing Nietzsche than the one posited by Bernstein. Connolly widens the distance between Kant and Nietzsche. He praises Nietzsche because he has left the Kantian imperative tradition behind and advocates arts of the self.34This claim is at odds with my reading of Nietzsche that emphasizes his debt to the imperative tradition in law of life. Connolly, moreover, has a difficult time affirming Kant. He reads him as proffering a mode of justice conceived as a code involving discipline. He finds Kant's morality too certain, grounded, and fundamental. It does not easily harmonize with his postmodern version of liberalism that calls for an ever-increasing emergence of new identities. The opposition Connolly makes between arts of the self and justice conceived as code (Nietzsche contra Kant) may unnecessarily drive a wedge between them. This could have the counter-productive effect of reinforcing the liberal rejection of Nietzsche which simultaneously lets liberals have their way with Kant. In my view, Connolly pays insufficient attention to the dimensions of Nietzsche's thought that would challenge the basis for the opposition between aesthetics of the self and transcendental commands.35 For Nietzsche, an ethic grounded on aesthetics is an insufficient basis for moral conduct because it is incompatible with autonomous practice. Since pathos of distance is not enough, Nietzsche turns to law. Nietzsche's new image of law is positioned between the empirical and the transcendental realms. This could be viewed as a de-radicalization of Kant insofar as it blurs the boundary Leslie Paul Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 33. Romand Coles emphasizes the Nietzschean themes of interaction and relations with others in Rethinking Generosity:Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). 34. See Connolly's The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1995), Why I Am Not a Secularist, and "Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault,"Political Theory 21 (August 1993). 35. Connolly may have moved beyond the opposition he has created between Kant ("moral codes") and Nietzsche ("arts of the self"). For him, moral codes and arts of the self operate in a relation of "dissonant interdependence"; The Ethos of Pluralization, 187.


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between the empirical and transcendental realms, thereby taking the teeth out of Kant's moral imperatives. I see it as a radicalization of Kant because it pushes Nietzsche past "will to power" and toward a more appealing ethical position that rejects sovereign subjectivity

Conclusion What are the implications of my interpretation of a Kantian Nietzsche? First, it corrects a widespread interpretive error about Nietzsche's "rejection" of the Enlightenment and provides a more nuanced reading of his moral significance. Second, it clears the way for a reading of Kant by way of Nietzsche in order to reclaim Kant from domesticating liberal interpretations and realign him with radical political thought. Finally,my essay opens the door for a defense of a richer conception of autonomy Grounded on freedom, autonomy remains the best antidote for ressentiment. Autonomy only becomes a mode of ressentiment if it holds the human up to transcendental standards that reinforce a conception of the subject as sovereign master. Using Kant as his point of departure, Nietzsche gives us a new image of an autonomous self that is receptive and free, one who renounces his own sovereignty and affirms his own transformation leading to improved relations with self and other.
