Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual

Are we free?

I may want to eat some cookies (first-order desire) now, but I also may not want this (second-order desire) due to reasons related to my being health-conscious. My will is free only if I can make any of my first-order desires the one upon which I act. 

We feel we choose, but we don’t. As per the science of conscious intention, free will is illusion. Schopenhauer and Einstein both said that a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants. 

Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), blamed customary morality for limiting humanity by making our actions predictable. He argues that it’s possible for a person of autonomy to exist beyond customary morality. He talks about a concept known as sovereign individual, describing him as ‘the ripest fruit on its tree, like one to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual’.         

In order to be a sovereign individual, Nietzsche said, it is necessary to give style to one’s character. Doing that is possible by examining our weaknesses and strengths and then put them into a concrete and artistic plan in which they appear as art and reason, and in which even weaknesses please the eyes.

By following only the herd morality, one will never be able to develop a strong will. One must rise above herd mentality - by dominating one’s lower desires and bringing them entirely in balance with one’s will - to become a creator of oneself. Achieving sovereignty as an individual is an excruciating job.

Although Nietzsche suggested that becoming a sovereign and free self is possible, neurologists have plenty of reasons to be sceptical about philosophical ideas concerning free will. The concept of free will, along with Nietzsche’s sovereign individual, finds no support in science, but remains an important ideal. Free will may be an illusion, but belief in it can be healthy, given that we are aware of the fact that there are various factors influencing our behaviour subconsciously. 

In an interview with the Paris Review, Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, ‘the greatest gift which humanity has received is free choice. It is true that we are limited in our use of free choice. But the little free choice we have is such a great gift and is potentially worth so much that for this itself, life is worthwhile living.’

‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe that it’s raining.’

As the saying goes, ‘everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.’

Producing around 100,000 chemical reactions and 50,000 thoughts, the human brain, the command centre of our nervous system, is a natural wonder. With this titanic processing power, we tend to believe that our judgement would be vastly precise, but that’s far from the truth.

We have long been curious about the circumstances in which it’s right to believe. The key source of this allurement is the desire to believe something for which we have inadequate evidence.    

What gives you the right to believe whatever you want to believe? What gives you the right to believe that climate change is a hoax, or you’re racially and morally superior because you’re white, or the Earth is flat? Such right to believe is a negative right. If your mind is closed, it’s not open for learning.

‘It is raining, but I don’t believe that it is raining,’ as G E Moore, an English philosopher, in the 1940s, said, concerning absurdity. Moore's paradox emphasises on our unwillingness to acknowledge of ourselves that we occasionally believe false things. Our pride grooms us into wanting to be correct at all times.

We know we’re wrong when we choose not to believe in the vital goodness of, and the truth about, humanity but, frankly, we don’t care, because it helps us to be content or happy by believing in what’s wrong.

At MoMA

According to Sturgeon's law, ninety per cent of everything is crap. I recently visited MoMA in New York, and, guess what, like what most of the people having inadequate understanding of contemporary art would believe, I thought Sturgeon, an American science fiction writer, was right in his adage. You would browse a floor after another of the museum and fail to breed much familiarity between your traditionalistic taste for art and what a modern art museum, like MoMA and London’s Tate Modern, has to offer.

The Birth of the World by Joan Miro

Julie Mehretu, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Martin Puryear, Lisa Yuskavage, Anicka Yi, Martin Assig, Dan Graham, and the list goes on. Who are they? I don’t know any of them. I never heard of them, I never read about them. A wide array of drawings, photographs, statues, paintings, and all sorts of weird objects that most of us cannot relate ourselves to... What’s the point? What’s the point of all these? What’s the point of modern art?          

What make a piece of art good are the standards we hold it to. The meaning of art is often static. Not art, but its style and concepts change their meaning through time. Contemporary art is essentially a break-off from classical ideas as it challenges the accepted concept of beauty. Trying to understand modern art from our traditionalist perspective is a mistake most of us make.

The Lovers by Rene Magritte

To understand art, one needs to recognise the raison d'etre of the piece, and then evaluate it by those standards. The same applies to contemporary art, which is bad, ugly, and meaningless only if we see it through the lens of a traditionalist. Modern art doesn’t connote representation for representation's sake, but rather stimulates us to look from different vantage points.  

Modern art is about the exploration of and setting new standards of ideas, visions, and creativity. It is the art of our time. Connecting with it often requires more of us.