Abstract
Chapter 4 solved the mystery surrounding the semi-animals and warrior artists Nietzsche refers to in GM II 16. Chapter 5 begins by tracing the individual skeins, in this case, cognitive and affective threads, that become entwined to create the kind of agency Nietzsche discusses in the Genealogy. My argument suggests that the internalization of drives is too symbolic and therefore cannot perform any real explanatory work. In keeping with implexic genealogy, I investigate the stable and fluid dimensions that account for the emergence of new phenomena in history. What really accounts for the formation of a new form of subjectivization, namely Christian subjectivity, is the environment that enhanced existing capacities of instrumental rationality of enslaved people on the one hand and dampened, on the other, cognitive virtues which served them well when these individuals were part of their respective tribes. On the affective side, religious narratives within states like Rome allowed enslaved people to release the pent-up trauma they experienced at the hands of their master, the Paterfamilias, into socially accepted ways. I use Christopher Fowles’s helpful article “The Heart of the Flesh,” to explain Nietzsche’s theory of emotions. I demonstrate that an impure somatic model justifies Nietzsche’s genealogical account for the rise and development of Christian morality in history.
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Notes
- 1.
Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 231.
- 2.
Janaway, Beyond Selflessness, 125.
- 3.
Lawrence Hatab, Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals an Introduction (Cambridge Introductions to Key philosophical Texts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).
- 4.
The Will to Power, WP 515. Also see KSA XIII 333–334.
- 5.
Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader, Trans. Holingdale, The Gay Science, section 111, 60. See also Daybreak, section 117: “A thirst, the habits of our senses have woven us into lies and deception of sensation: these are the basis of all our judgments and ‘knowledge’—there is absolutely no escape, no backway or bypath into the real world! We sit within our net, we spiders, and whatever we catch in it, we can catch nothing at all except that which allows itself to be caught in precisely our net.” See GM III 12.
- 6.
The above is Nozick’s first attempt to develop a tracking theory of knowledge and does not represent his considered fully fleshed out position. See pp. 172–176 of Robert Nozick Philosophical Explanations (Harvard University Press), 1984. Nozick raises several problems in regard to these simple conditions and develops a much more sophisticated framework to handle them. See particular p. 179. Also see Jennifer Nagel’s Epistemology a Very Short Introduction, (Oxford University Press, 2014), 60–72.
- 7.
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 156.
- 8.
Michael J. Deem, “A Flaw in the Stich–Plantinga challenge to Evolutionary Reliabilism,” Analysis Vol 78 | Number 2 | April 2018 | pp. 216–225 217.
- 9.
See especially Note 2 of the Genealogy.
- 10.
See Daniel Graeber, (Debt the First 5000 Years, New York Melville House Publishing), 2014.
- 11.
W.W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian, Cambridge University Press, 1908, 2.
- 12.
David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything New York: Penguin 2021, 508.
- 13.
Michael Zuckert, “Bringing Philosophy Down From the Heavens,” The Review of Politics Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter, 1989), pp. 70–85 p. 71.
- 14.
Cicero, Laws I. 2.
- 15.
Graeber and Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, 509.
- 16.
Michael Zuckert, “Bringing Philosophy Down from the Heavens,” The Review of Politics Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter, 1989), pp. 70–85 p. 76.
- 17.
Buckland, 3.
- 18.
Orlando Paterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982, 31.
- 19.
Graeber and Wengrow, 510.
- 20.
Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 31.
- 21.
Varro, On Agriculture (De Rustica), Trans. W.D. Hooper, and H.B. Ash Loeb Classical Library, 1934, 17.1.
- 22.
Varro, On Agriculture, 17.1.
- 23.
Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by one of his slaves so Tacitus explains “either because he had been refused emancipation after Pedanius had agreed to the price, or because he had contracted a passion for a catamite, and declined to tolerate the rivalry of his owner.” (Tacitus Annals Vol. 5 Book XIV. 42Loeb Classical Library, 5 volumes, Latin texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1925 thru 1937. Translation by C. H. Moore (Histories) and J. Jackson (Annals).
- 24.
Compare the above descriptions of slave treatment to the definition of trauma in the DSM V: The Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways:
-
1.
Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s).
-
2.
Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others.
-
3.
Learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. In cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent or accidental.
-
1.
- 25.
Josephus, The Works of Josephus Trans. William Whiston, The War of the Jews (Grand Rapids MI: Bakersfield Books, 1981) Book 7, Chapter 9.
- 26.
Tacitus A Treatise on the Situation, Inhabitants and manners of Germany (Germania and Agricola) Trans. John Aiken, Cambridge University Press, 1823, Chapter 7 line 50.
- 27.
Ibid., Chapter 7 line 51.
- 28.
Chapter 7, line 50.
- 29.
Tacitus, Chapter 7 lines 54–55.
- 30.
Ibid., Chapter 7 line 71.
- 31.
Tacitus, Chapter 25.
- 32.
Tacitus, Chapter 25.
- 33.
Tacitus, Chapter 24.
- 34.
For a clear introduction to Spartacus’s war, see Barry Strauss The Spartacus War New York Simon and Schuster, 2009.
- 35.
This is a brief summary of the main lesson of GM : III 16–20. There has been renewed interest in Nietzsche’s priestly type especially in regard to the question of value creation. Two thinkers in particular have done trailblazing work in demonstrating flaws with the traditional account regarding the creation of slave values. See Bernard Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57.2 (1997): 281–305. and R. Anderson in “On the Nobility of Nietzsche’s Priests,” in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide, ed. Simon May [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 24–55. According to Reginster, the quintessential attitude of slave morality is resignation; resignation that he cannot aspire to the life to create his own values–the quintessential attitude of nobility. Reginster explains: “Thus the slave accepts his masters’ high estimation of the noble life and their low estimation of himself, and therefore never even forms the expectation to live the life his masters value. The attitude characteristic of the slave is his resignation to a worthless way of life.” 287. In my view, Iain Morrisson’s “Ascetic Slaves: Rereading Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals” (Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn 2014), pp. 230–257 advances and clarifies the work of Reginster and Anderson in new ways. He offers the best explanation of how slave values eventually overtook noble ideals. My thesis provides a naturalistic underpinning to Morrison’s work.
- 36.
Peter Poellner, “Affect Value and Objectivity” in Nietzsche and Morality Edited by Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu Oxford University Press, 2007 227–261, 229.
- 37.
Peter Poellner, “Affect Value and Objectivity”, 227–261, 229.
- 38.
We will examine this point in more detail below where I flesh out Impure Somatic Theory.
- 39.
Christopher Janaway, Beyond Selflessness, 160–164.
- 40.
“Indeed, every table of values, every thou shalt known to history or ethnology, requires first a physiological investigation and interpretation, rather than a psychological one; and every one of them needs a critique on the part of medical science.” (GM II: 17 Note 2).
- 41.
Barlassina, L and Newen, A. “The Role of Bodily Perception in Emotion: In Defense of an Impure Somatic Theory” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1–42, 2013.
- 42.
John Dewey, “The Theory of Emotion. (2) The Significance of Emotions”, Psychological Review 2, (1895): 13–32, 15–16. This raw feel cannot be explained via James’s somatic account Dewey clarifies: “By this I understand him (James) to mean that he is not dealing with emotion as a concrete whole of experience, but with an abstraction from the actual emotion of that element which gives it its differentia—its feeling quale, its ‘feel.’ As I understand it, he did not conceive himself as dealing with that state which we term ‘being angry,’ but rather with the peculiar ‘feel’ which any one has when he is angry, an element which may be intellectually abstracted, but certainly has no existence by itself, of as full-fledged emotion-experience.”
- 43.
Lazarus, Richard. “From Appraisal: The Minimal Cognitive Prerequisites of Emotion.” In What Is an Emotion? 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Solomon, 125–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2003.
- 44.
Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What happens, (New York: Harvest Court, 1999), 28.
- 45.
See Barlassina and Newen, Impure Somatic Theory, 5.
- 46.
As Fowles clarifies, “The claim characteristic of the somatic approach is that bodily perturbation makes “a causal contribution” to the generation of affective mental states (Barlassina and Newen, “Impure Somatic Theory,” 640). Instead of S, A, P, somatic theories claim the correct order to be S, P, A: my perception of the bear, S, causes a series of bodily changes, P, which are then causally related to the affective mental state, A. This is what we find in Nietzsche’s writings.” (Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh” 119). I quoted this passage because it is clear that Fowles borrows his account of Nietzschean affects from Barlassina and Newen and yet, strangely, excises vital components from their model.
- 47.
Barlassina and Newen, 27.
- 48.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh” 137.
- 49.
Barlassina, and Newen, “The Role of Bodily Perception in Emotion” 18.
- 50.
Ament and Verke, Sports Med. 2009;39(5):389–422. Exercise and Fatigue.
- 51.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 137.
- 52.
Fowles, The Heart of the Flesh, 120.
- 53.
Fowles, The Heart of the Flesh, 124.
- 54.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 125–126.
- 55.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 126.
- 56.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 126.
- 57.
Fowles fleshes out this point in the following: “Social restrictions and their corresponding punishments produce a range of complex psychological responses, including (perhaps most importantly) bad conscience. Nietzsche writes of drives being accompanied by “either a good or a bad conscience.” These complex, compound affective episodes involve the drives co-occurring with an “attendant sensation of pleasure or displeasure,” acquired as “second nature” in relation to drives “already baptized good or evil,” or noted as “a characteristic of beings already morally determined and evaluated” (D 38). 129 On multiple occasions, he contrasts the “right class” of causes, to be identified by the “anatomically educated,” with the causes sought by those less well-versed. The latter group, we are told, seek “a moral explanation” for their state.” (NF 1884: 26 [92]; cf. 1885: 38 [1]; GM III.17 128 The Heart of the Flesh, 130.
- 58.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 134.
- 59.
Fowles, “The Heart of the Flesh”, 135.
- 60.
Fowles, The Heart of the Flesh”, 133.
- 61.
Fowles, The Heart of the Flesh”, 130–131.
- 62.
Barlassina and Newen, 27–28.
- 63.
Barlassina and Newen, 27.
- 64.
Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press Inc. 1977, 442.
- 65.
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death a Comparative Study, 68.
- 66.
Ibid., 70.
References
Ament and Verke, Sports Medicine. 2009; 39(5):389–422. Exercise and Fatigue.
Anderson, Lanier R. “On the Nobility of Nietzsche’s Priests,” in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide, ed. Simon May Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Barlassina and Newen, “The Role of Bodily Perception in Emotion: In Defense of an Impure Somatic Theory” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1–42, 2013.
Berne, Eric. What Do You Say After You Say Hello? New York: Grove Press Inc. 1977.
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Morrisson, Iain. “Ascetic Slaves: Rereading Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals”. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn 2014), pp. 230–257.
Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations Harvard University Press, 1984.
Nagel, Jennifer. Epistemology a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Paterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study Harvard University Press, 1982.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Poellner, Peter. “Affect Value and Objectivity” in Nietzsche and Morality Edited by Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu Oxford University Press, 2007, 227–261.
Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57.2 (1997): 281–305.
Strauss, Barry. The Spartacus War New York Simon and Schuster, 2009.
Tacitus A Treatise on the Situation, Inhabitants and Manners of Germany (Germania and Agricola) Trans. John Aiken, Cambridge University Press, 1823.
Tacitus Annals Vol. 5 Book XIV. 42Loeb Classical Library, 5 volumes, Latin texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1925–1937. Translation by C. H. Moore (Histories) and J. Jackson (Annals).
Varro On Agriculture (De Rustica), Trans. W.D. Hooper, and H.B. Ash Loeb Classical Library, 1934.
Zuckert, Michael. “Bringing Philosophy Down from the Heavens”, The Review of Politics Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter, 1989), pp. 70–85.
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Lightbody, B. (2023). A Closer Look at the Internalization of Drives as Implexes: The Cognitive and Affective Strands. In: A Genealogical Analysis of Nietzschean Drive Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27148-9_5
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