Kgaber

The "Sovereign Individual" and the "Ascetic Ideal": On a Perennial Misreading of the Second Essay of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy
of Morality
Matthew Rukgaber
The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Volume 43, Number 2, Autumn 2012, pp. 213-239 (Article) Published by Penn State University Press
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The Sovereign Individual and the Ascetic Ideal

On a Perennial Misreading of the Second Essay of Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality
MATTHEW RUKGABEr
ABSTrACT: This article supports Lawrence Hatabs and Christa Davis Acamporas interpretation that the sovereign individual is not Nietzsches positive ethical ideal. I draw on overlooked evidence from the Nachlass that bears on the notion of sovereignty, in conjunction with offering a close reading of the passages concerning this figure within the second and third essays of On the Genealogy of Morality. I argue that the second essay is not concerned with the fundamentals of agency; rather, it is focused on promising as a moral phenomenon. I demonstrate how the ambiguous traits attributed to the sovereign individual are deconstructed one after another, resulting in this figure appearing to be the culmination of the history of asceticism and moral responsibility. The sovereign individual is the modern individual who only stands apart from the herd insofar as the herd instinct has been perfectly internalized.
Introduction
he sovereign individual (hereafter, the SI) is almost universally held to be part of Nietzsches positive ethical ideal.1 Focus on this isolated description at the start of the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality results in a reconstruction of Nietzschean personhood and ethics based on the capacity to make and keep promises. For example, the SI has been used to understand us as self-conscious beings capable of standing in autonomous ethical relations to ourselves with a fundamental duty to do so and with a duty to act ethically with regard to each other.2 Attempts to reconstruct a Nietzschean ethic based on the SI passage have resulted in uncharacteristically Kantian results, because of the deontological nature of promising in the SI passage.3 The SI is not Nietzsches ideal and embodies key traits that Nietzsche associates with the Enlightenment and of which he is highly critical.4
JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 43, No. 2, 2012. Copyright 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
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214 MATTHEW RUKGABEr
The fact that this passage results in two conflicting interpretations is no ccident. Nietzsche obscures who and what the SI is, thereby enabling it to appear a both as a positive ideal and a target of criticism. This ambiguity is acknowledged at the close of the essay when he asks, Is an ideal actually being erected here or is one being demolished? (GM II:24; KSA 5, p. 335).5 The answer is the latter. The ambiguity of the SI aides in its demolishment by seducing readers into acceptance before it is systematically undermined.6 Moreover, introducing the object of the second essays criticism in the opening sections makes more sense than introducing an ethical alternative prior to what it is an alternative to and prior even to showing why an alternative is needed. Lawrence Hatab and Christa Davis Acampora have been, until recently, the sole critics of the identification of the SI with Nietzsches positive ethical ideal.7 I agree with the Hatab-Acampora position that the SI represents the modern ideal of individual rational autonomy that one tends to associate with Kant.8 Yet that description of the SI is not entirely accurate. The SI represents Nietzsches own critical take on the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment, and it is only the SIs self-deceived self-representation that is the ideal of individual autonomy. The element of irony that accompanies the description of the SI resides in the apparent praise given to an ideal that is impossible because of its opposition to our natural selves. Hatabs and Acamporas position has not been persuasive for several reasons. They have not made it clear enough who the SI is, instead merely gesturing at a vague Kantian ideal. They have also failed to identify how the text of GM itself provides a point-by-point deconstruction of each apparently positive trait of the SI. Instead, they have primarily relied on inconsistencies between the SI passage and other Nietzschean doctrines such as amor fati, freedom, determinism, individualism, selfhood, the value of creativity, the bermensch, and even eternal recurrence.9 But such contentious issues only double the interpretative challenges rather than provide convincing evidence of how to read the SI. I focus on the SI passage in context and draw on several overlooked passages from the Nachlass to support my reading. To fail to understand that the SI is Nietzsches target rather than his ethical ideal inevitably results in confusion about the aim, structure, and argument of GM II as a whole.10
Sovereignty in the Nachlass

Given that the On the Genealogy of Morality passages are well known, I begin with passages from the Nachlass that support my interpretation and that have remained unmentioned in the debate. There are a mere sixty-eight mentions of the word sovereign or sovereignty in Nietzsches published and unpublished works. The word appears in political and aesthetic contexts consistent with ordinary, nontechnical usage. Several uses are clearly positive, most notably in
THE SOVErEIGN INDIVIDUAL AND THE ASCETIC IDEAL 215
the published works. In Human, All too Human, Nietzsche defines his sense of sovereignty as having the capacity to revere the bad, too, and to embrace it, if it pleases us (AOM 329). In The Gay Science, the debtor-creditor relations discussed in GM II are anticipated when he claims that his sense of sovereignty demands that one be a debtor rather than pay with a coin that does not bear our image (GS 252). These remarks are notable in that they appear to conflict with the notion of sovereignty as rigid promise keeping found in GM II by licensing the breaking of promises.11 Acampora says that the scant references to the notion of sovereignty in the Nachlass support her reading.12 Mentions of sovereignty in passages on the fiction of the will and the illusion of being free and sovereign that arises from ignorance of the origins of action certainly do not conflict with it.13 But Nietzsches published works make similar claims and have not moved those who regard the SI as an ethical ideal to reinterpret it. One discussion of sovereignty in the Nachlass from 1887, titled The Three Centuries, strongly supports criticisms of the SI (KSA 12:9[178], p. 44043). In it, Nietzsche characterizes the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in terms of different sovereignties or dominant sensibilities. The seventeenth century is essentially Cartesian and is described as aristocratic and ruled by reason and the sovereignty of the will.14 Arrogant in its rejection of our animality and the heart, this period and its representative figures are averse to what is natural. They are sovereign because of their rejection of the past and their belief in themselves.15 The age and its embodiment is said to be a beast of prey at heart, an age that touts adhering to many ascetic habits and practices in order to be sovereign. Although there are strong wills, there are also strong passions requiring asceticism. The era of the sovereign will is the most antinatural of the centuries and thus the most problematic. The SI in On the Genealogy of Morality also shares features of the e ighteenth century, although the seventeenth centurys antinaturalism and focus on the will are most like the canonical SI description. The antinatural rationalism of the p revious century leads to a sovereignty of the senses and of feeling. Nietzsche identifies this period with Rousseau and calls it mendacious because all authority is undermined.16 Nietzsche also identifies Kant with this century. Kantian moral fanaticism and the idea of practical reason are completely of the eighteenth century while at the same time being completely outside of the historical movement.17 Kant ignores the spirit of his time and is in many ways retrograde in how he tries to bury the conative under the cognitive. But the spirit of Rousseau and the liberal ideals that Nietzsche associates withmodernity and decadence do exist within Kants thought (e.g. KSA 12:9[3], p. 34041). InNietzsches eyes, seventeenth-century rationalism (sovereignty of the will) is transformed by Kant and Rousseau to a zealous moralism rooted in asceticism, religious faith, and dogmatism. These two descriptions of the sorts of
sovereignty characteristic of early and late Enlightenment provide a guiding interpretive framework for the SI passage from On the Genealogy of Morality. The characterization of the sovereign attitude of the nineteenth century is significant in that it shares little with the SI from GM II and is clearly a more positive stage in our development. Even so, what the sovereign of this stage retains from the previous centuries, concepts that are central to the characterization of sovereignty in On the Genealogy of Morality, keeps it from being Nietzsches ethical ideal. The nineteenth century is identified with an honest but gloomy Schopenhauerian sovereignty of animality and the rule of desire.18 This period, unlike the previous eras and the SI from On the Genealogy of Morality, lacks the notion of will in either the rational- or sensible-volitional terms. Rather the notion of will refers to desire.19 The individuals who embody this sovereignty are animalistic, subterranean, ugly, realistic, vulgar and, therefore, better and more honest, but also weak willed, pessimistic and fatalistic.20 Progression past this sort of sovereignty is necessary as a determinist conception of the will attends it and the notion of morality is reduced to the instinct of pity. What is needed is to overcome the notion of will altogetherto deny that it is an efficient cause of action and then to rechristen it so as to indicate something altogether outside the traditional debate about the will. The description from On the Genealogy of Morality cannot be said to point to such a radical revision of the notion.21 Several passages in the Nachlass mention the phrase the sovereignty of the individual (die Souvernitt des Einzelnen) but do not suggest that it is an important philosophical notion.22 An exception is the only other usage of the exact phrase as is found in GM IIDie souvernen Individuen (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). Written three years before On the Genealogy of Morality, it concerns the weakness that results in a culture when it adopts the modern ideas of fairness, universal suffrage, and leniency toward crime and stupidity.23 The result, in the long run, is to bring victory to the stupid and the thoughtless.24 The consequences are an age of wars and revolutions accompanied by an ever-increasing weakening of humanity.25 This weakening results in two sorts of barbarians. Initially the barbarians embody the previous culture, and the representative figure is Eugen Dhring.26 Nietzsche regards Dhring as a moral fanatic filled with ressentiment and a desire for revengea physiologically failed priest of the weak, sickly herd (GM III:14; KSA 5, p. 370). The next stage is said to be the sovereign individuals, but their relationship to the overall weakening of humanity and to the previous sort of barbarian is not clear. All that is said is that these people have the same barbaric quantity of power as the previous weakened barbarians but that they now have liberty from all that previously existed, that is, the culture under which they were bound.27 One could try to construe this SI as a positive achievement; however, Nietzsche has bookended the remark, first, by saying that the ultimate result of weakening is stupidity and thoughtlessness and, second, by identifying the age in which
they emerge as one of great stupidity, brutality, and misery for the masses and the highest individuals.28 A natural reading of this passage is that the first barbarians are the ascetic priests whose work consists not just in herd formation but also in the development of individuals out of ascetic aversion to himself (GM III:18; KSA 5, pp. 38384). This creation of die souvernen Individuen is not antithetical to the herd; rather it is a redirection of ressentiment inward in an effort to overcome suffering, boredom, and the lack of meaning. The SI is distinguished from the herd, but perhaps only insofar as it no longer needs external powers (priests, external law, punishments, the past) to keep it within the herd: it has internalized the process.29 Nothing in the notebooks supports a strong positive reading of the SI, yet several passages suggest that Nietzsche is critical of it. Hatab and Acampora both place some weight on the fact that the SI shows up nowhere else, but absence cannot prove Nietzsches intention in On the Genealogy of Morality.30 Nevertheless, sovereign individuals with sovereign wills do appear in the Nachlass and support the rejection of the SI as Nietzsches ethical ideal.
Suppression, Promising, and Hominization

Before the SI is even introduced, a fundamental interpretative mistake is often made that inevitably leads interpreters to evaluate it positively. That mistake is to take Nietzsche to be providing an analysis of the very emergence of humanity, with its unique form of agency, out of animality. If this were Nietzsches topic, then the culmination of hominization in the SI would be a praiseworthy human being who is most fully and completely an agent.31 But the text shows something different. The SI is the realization of the capacity to be bound by promises, and several already human capacities provide the groundwork for this specialized agency. The second essay begins with an analysis of forgetfulness, which allows the nobler functions of humans to emergethe ordering of experience and thought, the clearing of consciousness, the making of judgments and evaluations, and the abilities of ruling, foreseeing, [and] predetermining (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). These uniquely human capacities are preconditions for promising and are a function of active forgetfulness rather than of the process called memory of the will (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). This positive faculty of suppression is said to keep things from entering into consciousness and, therefore, must itself be largely unconscious (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). Yet Nietzsche does not hesitate to describe it in intentional and agential terms as the act of closing the doors and windows of consciousness (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). Whether entirely unconscious or having some degree of consciousness, active suppression is crucial to self-conscious activities of all sorts, including the digestion
or processing of and learning from experience, hope for the future, pride in the present or the past, and even having a reflective present in time (GM II:1; KSA 5, pp. 291, 291292).32 Active suppression is a discerning perception that blocks access to consciousness, presumably with the aim of serving our natural values or general health. But this form of strong health and its consequences are not Nietzsches main concern (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). His focus is the opposite faculty, a form of memory that actively disconnects forgetfulness in cases where a promise is to be made (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). This contrasting faculty is not memory in general, anymore than active suppression is mere passive, physiological forgetting.33 Mere memory is a passive no-longer-being-able-to-get-rid-of the impression once it has been inscribed or a sort of physiological indigestion (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Active no-longer-wanting-to-get-rid-of is a continual rewilling of what one once willed (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). This faculty blocks the active discernment of what enters into consciousness and leaves one unable to make space for new things, even those that are in ones best and natural interests (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). No matter how much one wants and needs to suppress something, there is now a counterintentionality that will not allow it. Rather than a mere intellectual memory, like remembering a rule, the opposing faculty is a memory of the will or a semiautonomous desire (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Unlike other desires that can naturally run their course or that we can forget as they become irrelevant, the memory of the will is a desire that obligates one to attend to it even against other significant forces in the will. This recalcitrant desire allows one without reservation to populate the will with other acts, intentions, and desire (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Otherwise one could only complicate oneself reservedly, if one did not want to risk loss of some desires to newer ones. Although Hatab recognizes that forgetting might be part of the solution to the problem of ressentiment, he does not analyze the notion of memory of the will enough to recognize the rudiments of ressentiment within it.34 A desire in the will that derails the natural, healthy discernment of what should and should not enter into conscious concern is a necessary component of ressentiment. Rather than addressing the birth of human agency out of mere animality, Nietzsche addresses a force in the will that binds it in a way that it cannot escape, even when doing so is in the persons best interest. This can be called command over the future because that to which one binds oneself against oneself continues to reiterate itself within ones will (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Amemory that creates a force that can block some vital function of the will seems to me to be the paradoxical task nature has set for itself in creating promising animals (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 291). A promising animal is not paradoxical unless one recognizes promising to be essentially antinatural in this way. This self-binding is not so primitive that it constitutes the emergence of humanity itself. The expert use, in regards to oneself and the world, of the concepts of necessity, contingency,
causality, temporality, means, and ends is required in order to be able to vouch for oneself as future, as one who promises does (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Promising requires the precondition that we are regular and necessary and that we have an image of ourselves as such (GM II:1; KSA 5, p. 292). Many scholars regard this opening section as concerning the birth of agency itself. For example, Richard Schacht takes the memory of the will to be the formation of humans with personal identity. Nietzsche is said to offer an anthropological study of how we graduate from beings whose existence is little more than a succession of episodes in which one responds in an immediate way to beings with a consciousness that transcends the immediacy of absorption in these circumstances in the moment.35 Owen argues similarly, contending that what is under discussion is the question of the conditions under which doings (events) are deeds (actions), in particular how we become ethical agents, that is, agents who act in accord with a conception of ourselves.36 Schacht describes Nietzsches concern to be how we come to think for ourselves, rather than merely acting and reacting as one is moved in the moment to do, but that transformation is not what comes about by producing in us the memory of the will by which we are able to make a promise and shut down the natural and healthy irregularity enabled by forgetting.37 The memory of the will is the capacity to promise and enter into contractual relations; it is not our evolution beyond being mere creatures of the moment.38 Nietzsche does not provide an explicit analysis of promising, yet an obvious feature of a promise is that it is binding on the will. A promise is not just a voluntary norm, rule, or conception of ones self, insofar as these do not create a desire that can then resist active attempts to purge it.39 One ought to keep ones promises and cannot ignore them at will. Promising is not simply future-directed agency.40 Echoing Rousseau, promising is contract making. If suppression is something like valve control over what floods consciousness, then promising creates sticky valves that allow consciousness to continue to be flooded even if it would be better for them to be closed. A promise is elective, but it then reduces ones power of election: if it does not, it is not a real promise.41 One may want to forget a promise, even need to forget, but it inhabits the will and cannot be eliminated.42 A broken promise brings remorse, regret, and guiltthe hallmarks of bad conscience. Nietzsche says that the precise moment at which promising occurs, when the preconditions finally give rise to it, is during contract relationships between creditors and debtors (GM II:5; KSA 5, p. 298). Nietzsches genealogical investigation into moral obligation begins with the economic contracts made between creditor and debtor, and he calls these the very source of guilt and of personal obligation (GM II:8; KSA 5, p. 305). Promising or contracting is the source of all moral phenomena for Nietzsche, and the memory of the will is the capacity to enter into moral relationships, relations that bring feelings of obligation (duty)
and personal responsibility (guilt) (GM II:6; KSA 5, p. 300). The memory of the will creates desires that spring not from our own nature but from the needs of others and the community. What is created is a wanting that suppresses the power to suppress ones promises, a desire to keep ones promises (duty) and to avoid breaking them (guilt).
The History of Responsibility and the SI as Its Ideal

GM II:2 describes the history of promising as the story of the origins of responsibility. The SI is the culmination of that history, the most responsible being. Although Nietzsche does want to eventually salvage the notion of responsibility to self, there is no reason to think that he has in mind anything but the notion of moral responsibility at this point in the text. Becoming calculable, rather than promising and responsibility, is identified with human historys meaning, its great justification (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). Human prehistory can be seen as a condition and preparation for first making humanity toacertain degree necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and accordingly p redictable via the morality of custom and the social straightjacket (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). The notion of being personally responsible is not yet on the table and only arrives through the emergence of voluntary contractual relations and promises. For the longest period of human history, social relations and punishments were independent of any concern for personal responsibility (GM II:4; KSA 5, p. 298). The question is inevitably raised whether [the SI] is a creature already achieved or one yet to come.43 The SI is already achieved, insofar as the figure embodies the sovereignties of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries discussed in the Nachlass.44 Yet the SI is something of an idealization, portrayed as having a complete sovereignty of will. Nietzsche says that such a piece of perfectionthose who keep their promises even under the assault of personal injury, derision, accusationis something one would be prudent not to expect here, in which one in any case should not all too easily believe precisely because even the most righteous have passions and desires that can emerge and motivate breaking a promise (GM II:11; KSA 5, p. 311). To say that the SI is an ideal of the Enlightenment might provoke the objection that the SI does not appear to appeal to reason and the categorical imperative. But Nietzsche thinks of the Kantian as a passionate moral dogmatist that simply appeals to absolute duties and an antinatural conception of the will. The SI ultimately suffers from the stupidity and inability to weigh the relevant concerns of the situation for which Nietzsche criticizes Kantian practical reason (A 12). Christopher Janaway recognizes that the consequence of identifying theSIwith the Kantian ideal is that the SI has never existed, but he finds it
difficult to read the passage in this way.45 Janaways difficulty stems from the non sequitur that if the sort of freedom that the SI represents is an ideal that has and will never be, then we must at least be in doubt whether there has ever been any prerogative to promise, responsibility, or conscience.46 There is no reason to think that the impossibility of the SI invalidates these notions entirely. The SI is a figure who promises perfectly, who will not break her promise no matter what, even if the world should perish.47 To criticize such an ideal with its radically sovereign will does not mean that there might not be some alternative natural foundation on which to ground humanly possible senses of responsibility, promising, and conscience. When Nietzsche depicts his own ideal in On the Genealogy of Morality, it is with hesitation: an end still by no means in sight, a great promise that may be possible someday (GM II:16; KSA 5, p. 323). The SI is introduced as something plainly in sight: Placing ourselves at the end of the enormous process [. . .] we find the sovereign individual (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293 translation modified).48 At the end of GM II, Nietzsche proclaims that redemption from the curse that the previous ideal placed upon reality is possible (GM II:24; KSA 5, p. 336). Yet the only other ideal in the second essay is the SI, the formation of which, as Nietzsche makes clear, can be summarized as the entirety of asceticism (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 295). The final section of On the Genealogy of Morality gives a summary of moral history. Humanity was faced with suffering and could find no meaning: there was a need to justify, to explain, to affirm itself (GM III:28; KSA 5, p. 411). The ascetic ideal was the solution and, so far, has been the only meaning (GM III:28; KSA 5, p. 411). The reigning ascetic ideal provided a justification of life: armed with it, humanity could will somethingno matter for the moment in what direction, to what end, with what [it] willed: the will itself was saved (GM III:28; KSA 5, p. 412). The conception of the will that results expresses hatred of the human, still more of the animal, still more of the material by turning away from all appearance, change, [and] becoming [. . .] (GM III:28; KSA 5, p. 412). The ascetic ideal is the mere willing of willing, willing for its own sake emptied of all natural values, willing nothingness and rebelling against the most fundamental presuppositions of life in order to overcome depression and listlessness through self-anesthetizing flurries of feeling (GM III:28; KSA 5, p. 412). Nietzsche provides an organic metaphor of the SI as the fruit produced by the tree of the history of responsibility (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). On the one hand, the analogy between the production of the SI and the production of fruit by a tree suggests that the SI is a lawful outcome of the social straightjacket that creates moral responsibility. Interpreting the SI as Nietzsches inversion of the history of moral responsibility and its reigning ascetic ideal is not supported. On the other hand, the idea that history even progresses in such a lawful way,
like the natural process of fruiting, is something that Nietzsche deconstructs in GM II:12, arguing that within historical development and the struggle for power there is a continual reinterpreting, transforming, obscuring, conquering, and elimination of previous meanings and purposes (GM II:12; KSA 5, p. 314). The history of responsibility, he ultimately says, is not the story of a gradual organic growth but of a break, a leap, a compulsion (GM II:17; KSA 5, p.324). Therefore, the metaphor is unrepresentative of Nietzsches long view of history. The metaphor is apt if we read everything on the tree to be the social straightjacket, which was prepared and in the process of growing towards the certain end of the SI (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 295). But surely we cannot interpret the tree to be our becoming human, which is not Nietzsches topic. Besides this a mbiguity, the organic metaphor is misleading because an inversion of some sort must have occurred if the herd mentality produced individuals rather than just more oftheherd. Nietzsches great insight into the promising animal in GM II andthe ascetic animals in GM III is how it is that the herd persists and even thrivesthrough construction of the modern individual. The break in history whereby the social straightjacket creates individuals is therefore in plain sight, spoiling the metaphor even as it is being stated. That break is the creation of the ability to be ones own torturer (through guilt or bad conscience), which individualizes while weakening and which internalizes what was external coercion. There is little reason to think, given the omnipresence of the ascetic ideal in history, that the creation of the will within the SI is what redeems and finally helps us step beyond ourascetic history. Nothing said about the SI gives us reason to think that this is the opposing will in which an opposing ideal [to asceticism] expresses itself (GM III:23; KSA 5, p. 395).
The SI and the Morality of Custom

Before introducing the SI, a question of translation is in order. Sittlichkeit, sittlich, and bersittlich should not be translated as morality, moral, and supramoral. Nietzsche uses the words Moral or Moralitt when referring to morality. There are fewer than three hundred uses of Sittlichkeit and all its derivates in the entirety of Nietzsches published and unpublished writings, whereas there are almost a thousand uses of the word Moral alone, three hundred of Moralitt, and innumerable instances of derived words. Sittlichkeit refers specifically to social ethics or the customary norms (Sitte) of a society. This is the sense in which the term is used in Daybreak (see D 18). Nietzsche was surely aware that Sittlichkeit indicates the initial development of social mores, the first stage in Hegels objective spirit. Morality, in the Kantian sense, does not emerge until the final state of objective spirit in Hegelian philosophy.
Morality can only emerge once significant internalization of norms (Sitte) and of ones gaze takes place through punishment and ascetic practices. The SI is introduced as the individual resembling only himself, free again from the ethics of custom [der Sittlichkeit der Sitte], autonomous and bersittliche (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). Paradoxically, the SI is both free from and the goal of society and the ethics of custom [der Sittlichkeit der Sitte] (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). How the individual comes from the herd, how morality comes from immorality, and how life denial comes from life are the puzzles that motivate On the Genealogy of Morality. In each case, Nietzsche shows the dichotomy to be false. Morality is not separate from immorality. The modern individual does not stand apart from the herd. Life denial is still an act of life. The trait of resembling only oneself appears positive, but this trait is devalued later in Nietzsches description, when the SI is said to resemble the other promise keepers. As I have noted, the various sovereignties mentioned in the Nachlass are also said to resemble only themselves because they believe that they have cut themselves off from their past by relying on their individual reason and sentiments. Although the trait could refer to the individual who gives style to his character and whom Nietzsche praises, it could just as well refer to the Enlightenment figure who sees her own reason as the ultimate authority, as lawgiving in a kingdom of ends.49 The word autonomy appears in the entirety of Nietzsches written work only seven times: twice in GM II, once in Beyond Good and Evil to describe the herd (BGE 202; KSA 5, p. 125), and four times in the Nachlass, where it is said to be rare (KSA 9:7[66], p. 331), an impossible task (KSA 9:7[82], p. 333), where it is praised by French philosophers who are said to be sheep (KSA 13:11[137], p. 63), and where it is said to be in decline in modern society (KSA 13:11[142], p. 66). It is therefore extremely unlikely that Nietzsche is here adopting the notion of autonomy as his own positive ideal. The words association with the Kantian tradition makes it the most likely meaning here. Many scholars, including Walter Kaufmann, believe that the claim that the SI is bersittlich shows that the SI is not Kantian.50 But Kant and Hegel would agree completely with Nietzsches parenthetical remark that autonomous and sittlich are mutually exclusive (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293).51 To think otherwise is to believe that Nietzsche is talking about something other than the morality of custom and that he switches topic in midsentence. There is absolutely no reason to think that Nietzsche is saying here that his version of autonomy is incompatible with traditional Enlightenment morality, given that there is no reason to think that Nietzsche ever tries to adopt the term autonomy as his own and no reason to think that he is talking about anything other than social mores. If my interpretation of the SI is correct, then the actual impossibility of a totally autonomous will without deep roots in its culture and tradition means that the SI, insofar as it indicates modern humanity rather than an idealization,
is not in fact autonomous, entirely free from the herd morality of custom, and resembling only itself. This is the ironic element in the description and proving this is the very point of the second essays history of morality.
The SI and the Will

The SI is defined as the human being with his own independent, long will, the human being who is permitted to make promises (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). It is the case that to will something for a long time does seem to be praised in Beyond Good and Evil, at least with respect to countries (BGE 208; KSA 5, p.139). However, this trait is associated with indolence and being hard headed and is not unambiguously positive (BGE 208; KSA 5, p. 139). Also merely willing something a long time is not sufficient to positively evaluate the act of willing: the question is whether it is a will to negate or a will to affirm (BGE 208; KSA 5, p. 139). Of course Nietzsche does want to retain some notion of the will. In The Antichrist, he states that we no longer admit the will as a faculty. The old word will now serves only to denote a resultant, a kind of individual reaction, which follows necessarily upon a number of partly contradictory, partly harmonious stimuli: the will no longer acts or moves (A 14). If this is Nietzsches conception of the will, then the SI passage is hardly reflective of it.52 Promising is described as an autonomous action for which the SI is responsible rather than a necessary reaction to stimuli. I also believe that Nietzsche does have an account of responsibility, in terms of how much and how many things one could bear and take upon himself (BGE 212; KSA 5, p. 146). Nietzsche envisions responsibility in terms of maintaining a sense of self or harmony while containing as diverse and as conflicting set of drives or impulses as possible. Again this has no relation to the SI. A few lines later, Nietzsche reiterates the previous description except for exchanging long will for free will: This being who has become free, who isreally permitted to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign [. . .] (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). We can hardly be expected to unquestionably accept the SI as the actual embodiment of freedom, given that in GM II:7, Nietzsche claims that the idea of free will, of absolute spontaneity of man in good and evil was in fact created by philosophers in order to make the world into a field of permanent interest to god(s) (GM II:7; KSA 5, p. 305).53 Of course, Nietzsche does ultimately suggest that his ideal can make the will free again by absorption in reality and through a kind of sublime malice [. . .], an ultimate most self-assured mischievousness of knowledge that belongs to and places ultimate value in the great health (GM II:24; KSA 5, p. 336). Part of that redemption from asceticism is the rechristening of the instinct for freedom as the will
to power (GM II:18). Again, nothing in the SI passage suggests that this it is Nietzsches alternative conception of will. In both descriptions of the SI mentioned so far, the phrase being allowed or permitted (drfen) to promise is used. Poor translations have rendered this more positive sounding (having the right to promise) than it is.54 The phrase of being permitted to X itself is not especially significant: it peppers Nietzsches published and unpublished works in a way indicative of ordinary German usage. However, the phrase appears, relative to the rest of his writings, with unusual density in GM II. If the SI is allowed to promise or is granted permission, then the question arises, who permits? The natural answer is that permission derives from the SIs actual ability to live up to the standard of keeping ones promise, although that raises the question of why a far more ordinary construction indicating ability (knnen, to be able) is not used. One possibility is that the permission to make promises and contracts comes from the herd once one sufficiently acquires bad conscience or the pang of conscience (GM II:14; KSA 5, p. 318). The language of permission appears when discussing the economics of debt that permits one to vent power on the powerless and to hold a being in contempt and maltreat it (GM II:5; KSA 5, p. 300). The same sort of permission appears again, making it clear that it is the community that permits (GM II:10). However, there is simply too little evidence in the description of the SI to claim that the permission granted the SI comes from the community and that the SIs supposed independence from that community is, thereby, undermined. It is clear from the history of contractual relations that Nietzsche offers in the rest of GM II that he believes that our promises continue to be haunted by the coercion of the past. He says that whenever we are serious, the terrible cruelties of the past well up within us, echoing the ancient I will nots in connection with which one has given ones promise in order to live within the advantages of society (GM II:3; KSA 5, pp. 29597). Besides casting doubt on the SIs liberation from the past, the physiology and origin of promising is important given the description of the SI. We find in him a proud consciousness, twitching in all his muscles, of what has finally been achieved and become flesh in him, a true consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of the completion of man himself (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293).55 It is difficult to ignore the idea of promises cut into the flesh of tamed humanity in this description. The double mention of consciousness, a crucial Enlightenment concept, implores us to consider Nietzsches views of this notion. In the very next section of the essay, he scornfully calls reflective consciousness gloomy and a showpiece of man (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 297). When discussing bad conscience, Nietzsche identifies its source as the reduction of strong drives in human being and the eventual condemnation and punishment of those drives, leaving humanity to thinking, inferring, calculating, connecting cause and effect, [. . .] to their consciousness,
to their poorest and most erring organ (GM II:16; KSA 5, p. 322). This description of the SI is also very antinatural, given that it is consciousness in every muscle instead of the multifarious drives and instincts that Nietzsche believes make us up.56 The veracity of the SIs consciousness of power and freedom is questionable simply because one surely has no conscious awareness of whether one is free or not. It is even less likely that one can have a veracious feeling of being the completion of humanity.57 As for the pride being taken in such consciousness, one can hardly overlook a passage that prefigures this discussion. In that passage from Daybreak, reason and the feeling of freedom that are our pride are undermined by the description of its historical development, essentially the same story given in On the Genealogy of Morality (D 18; KSA 3, p. 31). Nietzsche explicitly mentions two different ideals. The first is the most ethical person [sittlichsten Menschen] of the community who possesses the virtue of the most frequent suffering, of privation, of the hard life, of cruel chastisement for its own sake or for the sake of being moral (D 18; KSA 3, p. 30; translation modified). This individual is the figure of self-chosen torture who appears as an individual, responsible, and moral agent but one whose actions have been directed toward the good of the community and toward promotion of belief in themselves (D 18; KSA 3, p. 31). The other ideal has some of these traits, but they are in service of discipline, of self-control, of satisfying the desire for individual happiness (D18; KSA 3, pp. 3031). These two ideals can become easily confused, as they share some features. But the former simply aims at being moral: the reason for the ethical persons self-torture is the good of the herd. By contrast, the figure that pursues her desire actually aims at self-perfection and has positive, life-affirming values. The two ideals, the ascetic individual whose actions support the herd and the selfish individual whose actions aim at satisfying her desires, mirror precisely the battle between ideals in GM II. Yet On the Genealogy of Morality hardly says anything about the positive alternative ideal and is focused instead on undermining the ascetic ideal. Both ideals feature discipline, self-control, will, and responsibility: identifying such traits in the SI does not identify which ideal it is. It is only by looking at the content of the will that we can determine whether it is or isnt part of the ascetic ideal.
The SIs Standard of Value and Relations to Others

The relationship between the SI and the rest of the world is introduced first in terms of the SIs superiority and then in terms of the affects of others that are provoked. Nietzsche asks, How should he not know what superiority he thus has over all else that is not permitted to promise and vouch for itself, how much
trust, how much fear, how much reverence he awakenshe earns all three [. . .] (GM II:2; KSA 5, pp. 29394). Nietzsche asks how the SI is supposed not to know of its superiority, presumably over the rest of nature and not just over persons who are not permitted to promise. But even if this superiority is over just the less adept promise keepers, what is important is the standard by which the SI is said to be superior over others. It has nothing to do with any of the innumerable traits and capacities that Nietzsche regularly praises but with the ability to promise. If the SI is the perfect internalization of social ethics (Sittlichkeit), such that he now is a self-regulating and self-punishing moral agent, then he is indeed superior to similarly weakened but less active beings who simply follow the herd. The three affectstrust, fear, and reverencelead one to ask who it is that has these affective responses to the SI. The affects are awakened within those who are inferior promise keepers. The less able promiser can trust the SI to keep her promise, has fear of the SIs response to a broken contract, and can easily succumb to the SIs merely apparent godlike transcendence of human inconsistency. So there is a legitimate sense in which the SI does awaken these affects in the inferior promisers, the mere herd members who still simply follow the ethics of custom and who have not ascended to full-blown morality and become a selfregulating member, even leader, of the herd. I believe that Nietzsches stress and use of scare quotes in stating that the SI earns these affective responses suggests doubt about the SIs responsibility for who and what she is. However, such subtleties might strike one as convoluted and are not necessary for b ringing the SIs responsibility for these affects into question. The history of the SIs emergence brings it into question already. I do find it troublesome, however, that Nietzsches scare quotes in the SI passage are regularly ignored, as if he randomly peppers his text with them without reason. The next passage is, in my opinion, the most problematic for anyone who claims that the SI is Nietzsches positive ethical ideal:
The free human being, the possessor of a long, unbreakable will, has in this possession his standard of value: looking from himself towards the others, he honors or holds in contempt; and just as necessarily as he honors the ones like him, the strong and reliable (those who are permitted to promise),that is, everyone who promises like a sovereign, weightily, seldom, slowly, who is stingy with his trust, who conveys a mark of distinction when he trusts, who gives his word as something on which one can rely [. . .]. (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294)58
The SI is said to have within the possession of this long unbreakable will a standard of valuenamely of having such a will (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294). It is wrong to think that what is being said here is that the SI has some positive valuesfor example, those surrounding the notion of life as will to power.59 What is being said is that the SIs ultimate standard of value is simply the having of this will. To say that a will that cannot be broken and that keeps a promise
regardless of the consequences and changes in circumstances is the ultimate standard of value by which persons are judged not only has no precedence in Nietzsches thought but stands quite opposed to his fundamental value system. The SIs value system is clearly Kantian, in which the unconditional value of the good will grounds all else. Nietzsche criticizes the formalism of such an ethics, its progression to an ever more impersonal appraisal of deeds leading to the notion of things being in themselves bad or good, which is devoid of all sense (GM II:11; KSA 5, p. 312).60 This is precisely the problem with Kants defense of promise keeping. Kant argues that one cannot make a false promise to someone however great the disadvantage to him or to another that may result from it because, although I may do no wrong to any particular person, I do wrong to humanity generally by bringing it about, as far as I can, that statements [. . .] in general are not believed, and so too that all rights which are based on contracts come to nothing and lose their force.61 The SIs standard of value undermines the trait of resembling only himself, unless we read that only to mean divorced from tradition. The SI is now seen to be a part of a group of like-minded, reliable persons. The SIs seldom, slow, and stingy trust and promise making with similar persons may seem like a natural trait to have, given the seriousness of the SIs promising. Little else could be said about this trait, if it did not reappear later in GM II. The actual effect of punishment is said to be a sharpening of prudence, in a lengthening of memory, in a will hereafter to proceed more cautiously, more mistrustfully, more secretively, in the insight that one is once and for all too weak for many things, in a kind of improvement in self-assessment. Generally what can be achieved among humans and animals through punishment is an increase in fear, a sharpening of prudence, mastery of the appetites: punishment tames man, but it does not make him better (GM II:15; KSA 5, p. 321). Given the similarities between this description and the SI, I find it hard not to see the SI as a fearful, tame, and narrowly prudent soul who is too weak to live up to the idea of Nietzschean sovereignty and responsibility in which one risks pursuit of a complex and even contradictory field of desires. The earlier affect of fear is now explained in more detail. Just as necessarily he will hold his kick in readiness for the frail dogs who promise although they are not permitted to do so, and his switch for the liar who breaks his word already the moment it leaves his mouth (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294). This cruelty is clearly in line with the history of cruelty that creates modern morality, indicating that the fruit has not fallen far from the tree. The sort of radical revaluation that is associated with Nietzsches positive ethical ideal is not on display here. Instead, we find a continued cruelty directed at imperfect promisers, perhaps even those who are mischievous in their promising.62 Although cruelty is not bad in itself, this is not cruelty aimed at reattaching a good and valuing conscience to the natural inclinations.
The SI as Master of Nature and Fate

Of the SI, it is also asked how should he not be aware of how this mastery over himself also necessarily brings with it mastery over circumstances, over nature, and all lesser-willed and more unreliable creatures (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 293). If one wanted to praise the SI, one could argue that the SIs resoluteness makes external circumstances irrelevant. Of course, ignoring changing circumstances that might necessitate the breaking of a promise seems to indicate the most rabid deontologist. The rhetorical question becomes more difficult to take seriously when the SI is said to be master over nature and all unreliable persons.63 As Hatab and Acampora have pointed out, Nietzsches ideal is precisely not that of a being who has mastery over all of nature and fate, in the sense of being able to completely shut it out of his will. Nietzsches ethical ideal is described as a being who refuses to stand apart or beyond nature and instead submerses and buries himself within nature to ultimately redeem its value (GM II:24; KSA 5, p. 336). The same idea appears again and sounds just as impossible and anti- Nietzschean: the free human being, the possessor of a long, unbreakable will, [. . .] he knows himself to be strong enough to uphold [his promises] even against accidents, even against fate (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294). The idea of an unbreakable will so committed to its promise, to the fundamental value of promise keeping, speaks to a will that will stand by its obligation even at the expense of life.64 Although the SI is said to have strength, something that Nietzsche values, strength here is synonymous with the unbreakable will that is upheld in the face of all accidents that might occur and even against fatethat is, against all intrusions of reality and life (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294).65 The scare quotes suggest that Nietzsche is skeptical that this is even possible, given that Nietzsche goes on say that our animal instincts are inescapable (GM II:22; KSA 5, p.332). But this is nevertheless how the radical, antinatural freedom of the SI is conceived. So obviously opposed to Nietzsches positive ethical ideal, the SI passage causes more interpretive problems than it solves.66 One might argue that it is hard to envision the SI as Kantian given the failure to mention reason as the ground that permits true promising. But in GM II:3, Nietzsche argues that through the social straightjacket and its violent punishments one retains in the memory of the will a few I will nots or promises that then make the bedrock of reasonalthough Nietzsche places scare quotes around reason to cast doubt on whether this is really being rational (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 297). The move from engrained, almost mechanical promises to reason and mastery over the affects seems to be the leap from the social straightjacket to the SI who is apparently master of all of nature.
The SI and Conscience

The final lines of the SI passage summarize several of the previous claims: [T]he proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and fate, has sunk into his lowest depth and has become instinct, the dominant instinct:what will he call it, this dominant instinct, assuming that he feels the need to have a word for it? But there is no doubt: this sovereign human being calls it his conscience . . . (GM II:2; KSA 5, p. 294). What has not been mentioned is the idea that now, at the lowest depth of the person, responsibility has become the dominant instinct. These claims are remarkable in that they are so completely opposed to Nietzsches philosophy that it is mind-boggling that they have been considered to be a characterization of his ethical ideal.67 The idea that there is nothing more fundamental or deeper in the person than sense of responsibility and of ones freedom over all other aspects of ones person (and even fate) is at odds with Nietzsches most basic conception of our being. This idea, of conscience as the dominant instinct, sovereign and tyrant, is regarded in the Nachlass as a fundamental distortion and weakening of humanity (KSA 10:3[1].176, p. 74). To say that conscience is the dominant instinct is to say that all other instincts must seek permission from conscience before being allowed to manifest. Although Nietzsche may want to modify the notion of conscience, adopting a good conscience that affirms life and natural values, it would be rather odd to mention such a fundamental inversion of the phenomenon of conscience before even stating what conscience is and why such an inversion is needed. Conscience coemerges with contract law and carries with it the ideas of guilt, [. . .] duty, [and] sacredness of duty (GM II:6; KSA 5, p. 300). The SI is said to be the highest, almost disconcerting form of conscience, which does not suggest an inversion of its origins (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 294). The previously mentioned traits of having pride and being permitted to vouch for himself are now identified with being permitted to say yes to oneself too (GM II:3; KSA 5, p. 294). Presumably conscience, whether good or bad, is the ability to look at oneself and ones actions and say yes or no to them, either intellectually or at an affective level. Although the SIs saying yes to himself may seem like Nietzsches affirmative, antipessimistic response to life, I do not believe that this is so. What must be asked is exactly to what one is saying yes and, in particular, how is one identifying the self. What is so devious about the ascetic formation of the modern individual is that an attitude antithetical to life, and therefore to the individual, masquerades as an affirmative one. This can be seen in the way that bad conscience or consciousness of guilt is able to take all the no that one says to oneself, to nature, naturalness, the facticity of ones being and casts it out of oneself as a yes as existing, as corporeal, real, as God,
as holiness of God, as judgeship of God, as executionership of God, as beyond, as eternity, as torture without end, as hell, as immeasurability of punishment and guilt (GM II:22; KSA 5, p. 332). So the final direct reference to the SI in GM II:3 is another ambiguous description that is undermined by the history of conscience that Nietzsche soon provides. In conclusion, the ability of the SI passage to sustain two completely contradictory interpretations cannot be denied. Either this ambiguity is unin tentional and Nietzsche is a failure as a writer or else it is intentional and the reading provided here is the correct one. Nietzsche would have no other reason to intentionally construct such an ambiguous passage if it were not to entice us with an ideal that is then exposed as fraudulent. I can find no reason to support the SI as a representative of Nietzsches ethical ideal, except that on the surface it appears positive. But that is hardly a sufficient reason when faced with the difficulties within the textespecially, the SIs general antinaturalism and standard of valueand its subsequent deconstruction within GM. Passages from the Nachlass indicating that the sovereign will is a relic of the Enlightenment, Nietzsches own conception of the will, responsibility, and his own redeeming natural ideal, and his criticisms of notions central to the SIthese all seem like inescapable evidence for not only the ambiguity of the passage but also for its interpretation as part of the ascetic ideal that has dominated human history up until this time.
Eastern Connecticut State University matthew.rukgaber@gmail.com
NOTES
1. In his translation of On the Genealogy of Morals, Kaufmann, in a footnote, identifies the SI with Nietzsches ideal and with the opposite of an inner-directed Kantian ideal, but the SIs focus on promise keeping seems to be inner-directed (i.e., focused on the intention of the promiser) in precisely the way Kaufmann characterizes Kants ethics (On the Genealogy of Morals [New York: Random House, 1967], 59). 2. David Owen, Equality, Democracy, and Self-Respect: Reflections on Nietzsches Agonal Perfectionism, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002): 11516. 3. For example, Richard Whites book on the problem of sovereignty in Nietzsche is plagued by Kantianism because of the SI-passage. White claims that the SI contains all the connotations of self-mastery and self-legislation that one would typically associate with the ordinary ideal of autonomy (Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997], 7). Sensing the implausibility of such a reading, White backpedals and states that Nietzsche hardly accepts an ordinary notion of autonomy. 4. Although Kant is a leading figure of the Enlightenment, the SI represents several errors of Enlightenment thought and is not intended as a charitable representation of Kant or any other specific thinker. In an earlier version of this article I simply identified the SI with a Kantian ideal, whereas I should have said that the SI is Nietzsches critique of Kant and Rousseau as moral dogmatists masquerading under the banners of reason and feeling. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for motivating me to clarify this.

5. I use the Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen translation of On the Genealogy of Morality (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), although Carol Diethes translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) is in some ways superior. KSA citations are given for Nietzsches unpublished writings and for longer passages in the published works. The other translations I use are by Walter KaufmannThe Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), Ecce Homo (New York: Random House, 1967), and The Gay Science (New York: Random House, 1974)and by R. J. HollingdaleDaybreak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Human, All too Human (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 6. I am grateful for an anonymous reviewer pointing out to me Nietzsches own description of how On the Genealogy of Morality functions in Ecce Homo: Every time [in each essay, there is] a beginning that is calculated to mislead and that is even ironic and deliberately in the foreground, before it undergoes gradual unrest (EH Books GM; KSA 6, p. 352). 7. Brian Leiter has recently offered some support for the Hatab-Acampora position, stating that it seems to me a mistake, however, to read this passage as articulating a kind of ideal of agency or selfhood; in context, I think it is far more plausible to understand the passage as being wholly ironic and mocking (review of Beyond Selflessness, by Christopher Janaway, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, June 3, 2008, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23543-beyond-selflessnessreading-nietzsche-s-genealogy). Paul Loeb has also voiced a qualified support; however, he argues that the SI is not responsible and autonomous enough (Finding the bermensch in Nietzsches Genealogy of Morality, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 30 (2005): 7879; The Death of Nietzsches Zarathustra [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010], 225n). Loeb makes several points that support my reading, including, for example, that the SI is described in terms of an ideal criticized in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and that the SIs supposed power is illusory (Finding the bermensch in Nietzsches Genealogy of Morality, 81). Although Loeb is correct that the Nietzschean ideal SI does have some sort of responsibility and autonomy, he is mistaken to characterize this as a continuous quantitative increase of the same sort of responsibility and autonomy that founds the SI. The radical nature of Loebs reconstruction of Nietzsches ideal suggests that a qualitatively different sort of responsibility is needed (The Death of Nietzsches Zarathustra, 219). 8. Lawrence Hatab, Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 76, 80. 9. Hatab, Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 7782; Lawrence Hatab, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1995), 38; Christa Davis Acampora, On Sovereignty and Overhumanity: Why It Matters How We Read Nietzsches Genealogy II:2, in Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays, ed. Christa Davis Acampora, 14761 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 152. 10. For example, Schacht claims that the whole burden of GM II is to contrast the conscience and special sense of responsibility of such an individual [the SI] both with the mentality of those who are merely sittlich [following social norms] and with the bad conscience of others in whom a different sort of psychology has been cultivated (Nietzschean Normativity, in Nietzsches Postmoralism, ed. Richard Schacht [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 178). I hold that the SI does move beyond the mere following of social norms to the stage of morality. But morality and its bad conscience consist merely of social norms abstracted from their origins. 11. Although the defender of the SI passage in On the Genealogy of Morality might counter this passage from The Gay Science by observing that the SI never promises in a way that does not fully represent itself, that is, it never becomes a debtor because its debts and promises are always made on its own terms. 12. Acampora, On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 153.

13. Der Wille als Erdichtung. [. . .] man glaubt, da er frei und souvern ist, weil sein Ursprung uns verborgen bleibt und weil der Affekt des Befehlenden ihn begleitet (KSA 11:27[24], p. 282). Interestingly, this aphorism also suggests that the affect of sovereignty is the false unification of different affects into the will (KSA 11:27[24], p. 282). This passage also counts against those who would argue that expert, unreflective, and virtuoso action is a feature of the SI and constitutes a veracious affect regarding our freedom. 14. Aristokratism Descartes, Herrschaft der Vernunft, Zeugni von der Souverainett des Willens (KSA 12:9[178], p. 440). 15. Das 17. Jahrhundert ist aristokratisch, ordnend, hochmthig gegen das Animalische, streng gegen das Herz, ungemthlich, sogar ohne Gemth, undeutsch, dem Burlesken und dem Natrlichen abhold, generalisirend und souverain gegen Vergangenheit: denn es glaubt an sich. Viel Raubthier au fond, viel asketische Gewhnung, um Herr zu bleiben. Das willensstarke Jahrhundert; auch das der starken Leidenschaft (KSA 12:9[178], p. 44041). 16. Feminism Rousseau, Herrschaft des Gefhls, Zeugni von der Souverainett der Sinne (verlogen) (KSA 12:9[178], p. 440). 17. Kant, mit seiner praktischen Vernunft, mit seinem M o r a l-Fanatism ist ganz 18. Jahrhundert; noch vllig auerhalb der historischen Bewegung; ohne jeden Blick fr die Wirklichkeit seiner Zeit z.B. Revolution [. . .] (KSA 12:9[178], p. 442). 18. Animalism Schopenhauer, Herrschaft der Begierde, Zeugni von der Souverainett der Animalitt (redlicher, aber dster) (KSA 12:9[178], p. 440). 19. Schopenhauer sagte Wille; aber nichts ist charakteristischer fr seine Philosophie, als da der Wille in ihr fehlt, die absolute Verleugnung des eigentlichen Wollens (KSA 12:9[178], p. 441). 20. Das 19. Jahrhundert ist animalischer, unterirdischer, hlicher, realistischer, pbelhafter, und ebendeshalb besser ehrlicher, vor der Wirklichkeit jeder Art unterwrfiger, wahrer, es ist kein Zweifel: natrlicher; aber willensschwach, aber traurig und dunkelbegehrlich, aber fatalistisch (KSA 12:9[178], p. 441). 21. [. . .] die Leugnung des Willens als wirkende Ursache; endlicheine wirkliche Umtaufung: man sieht so wenig Wille, da das Wort frei wird, um etwas Anderes zu bezeichnen (KSA 12:9[178], p. 442). 22. One passage that is relevant is a summary of the argument of GM II. It begins by claiming that the psychological error from which the dichotomy moral/immoral (selfless/selfish) emerges is dogmatism about the ego. Nietzsche then describes how the distinction between I and non-I leads to a sort of dialectic in which value is located in one or the other. Sovereignty is tentatively mentioned as an opposing force to the herd instinct. Yet Nietzsche goes on to argue that insofar as the idea of sovereignty includes the notion of an individual in-and-for-themselves, then all value lies in self-denial (KSA 12:10[57], p. 48687). 23. Eure Billigkeit, ihr hheren Naturen, treibt euch zum suffrage universel usw., eure Menschlichkeit zur Milde gegen Verbrechen und Dummheit (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). 24. Auf die Dauer bringt ihr damit die Dummheit und die Unbedenklichen zum Siege (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). 25. uerlich: Zeitalter ungeheurer Kriege, Umstrze, Explosionen. Innerlich: immer grere Schwche der Menschen (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). 26. 1) D i e B a r b a r e n, zuerst natrlich unter der Form der bisherigen Cultur (z.B. Dhring) (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). 27. 2) Die souvernen Individuen (wo barbarische Kraft-Mengen und die Fessellosigkeit in Hinsicht auf alles Dagewesene sich kreuzen) (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659). 28. Zeitalter der grten Dummheit, Brutalitt und Erbrmlichkeit der M a s s e n und der hchsten Individuen (KSA 10:24[25], p. 659).

29. In an earlier version of this article, I explained that the SI can be seen as the tame animal who is the perfect instantiation of social norms insofar as these agree with rational norms. This was my way of unifying the idea of the SI as the Kantian ideal of a self-legislator with Nietzsches critical perspective on the SI as the embodiment of the ascetic tradition. I have made this aspect of SIs inclusion within the herd more explicit based on Nietzsches remarks in GM III about the activity of the ascetic priests and the Nachlass. 30. Hatab, Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 76; Acampora, On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 152. 31. I certainly do think that Nietzsche has a conception of the self and of agency, but even if I did not, such grand and interpretatively contentious claims are not the best way to make the relatively straightforward textual point that the SI is criticized in GM II. Acampora argues that Nietzsche rejects the unity of the self and of being in favor of notions of plurality and becoming, and Hatab makes a similar point (Acampora, On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 150, 153; Hatab, Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 7879). Such claims partially explain why their reading has not been more influential. 32. Acampora properly stresses the positive nature of forgetting, which those who praise the SI seem to forget (On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 149). I do not see that Acamporas praise of forgetting is either out of touch with Nietzsches text or that it radically suggests some sort of atavistic return, which is a criticism Loeb raises of her interpretation (Finding the bermensch in Nietzsches Genealogy of Morality, 78). Loeb, although rightly being skeptical of the SI as Nietzsches ideal, is quite mistaken when he suggests that what Nietzsche is claiming here is that conscience is what allowed the emergence of the human animal from the mere animal (75). 33. Conway mistakenly regards Nietzsches discussion of memory here to be elevatating humans above a mere animal existence that relies entirely on instincts (Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals [London: Continuum, 2008]: 55). Conways discussion does seem to cast the SI in a positive light, but he nevertheless regards this figure as the pre-historic progenitor of the nobles described in Essay I (57). If the SI is prehistoric, then he is not Nietzsches ideal. Conway does not equate the SI with the ideal of GM II:24. On the other hand, he does see the SI as a positive accomplishment, a being with a robust, independent, self-reliant will and conscience that has not been polluted by the moral tradition and bad conscience (58). This is a rather unique interpretation, equating the SI, perhaps, with some of the ancient Greeks that Nietzsche valorizes. But the values of the SI are not those of the more naturalistic, premoral Greeks. 34. Hatab, Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 70. 35. Richard Schacht, Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 112. 36. David Owen, Autonomy, Self-Respect, and Self-Love: Nietzsche on Ethical Agency, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, ed. Kem Gemes and Simon May (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 205. Owen claims that Nietzsche is advancing the idea of agency free will, a notion that Owen borrows from Ken Gemes, who also regards this as being Nietzsches concern in the SI passage. Agency free will is just the notion of that an action can be mine without carrying with it the weight of moral responsibility (Owen, Autonomy, Self-Respect, and Self-Love, 205; Gemes, Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, 36). Even more strange is Owens claim that Nietzsche is discussing entitlement to represent ourselves to others as holding certain beliefs or attitudes or commitments (Nietzsche Ethical Agency and Democracy, in Nietzsche, Power, and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsches Legacy for Political Thought, ed. Herman Siemens and Vasti Roodt [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008], 148). The idea of full competence to represent oneself to the world strikes me as odd for two reasons. First, representing myself to the world is not some power that I master. My representation to the world is largely a matter of how others represent me: I present, act, and behave and others represent me. I represent myself to myself but not to the world. This strange

phrase contains, I believe, a buried ethical judgment about the need to be honest with others and with oneself, which grounds Owens notion of ethical agency. My second problem with this idea is that Owen contrasts the SI, who has such competence in self-representing to the world, with the wanton, who does not (149). Yet the wanton is also representing themselves to the world, namely as a wanton. 37. Schacht, Making Sense of Nietzsche, 112. 38. Schacht, Making Sense of Nietzsche, 113. In his book on Nietzschean sovereignty, White defines it extremely generally as the condition of the individual as an individual, or the determination of the individual as such, asserting that it is simply the idea of self-commandment (Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty, 6). Even characterizations of it as second-order willing, willing to will, or forming a principle of willing that one will continue to follow in the future, which are other characterizations that White uses, are merely notions of self-directed agency and reflective-normative activity in general (1819). If one does not address how promising binds the will in a way that creates a fundamental tension in the will by which the power to forget is disconnected and no longer available to us, then one simply is not talking about promising. 39. John Richardson helpfully frames the issue in terms of our forming an allegiance to a rule or norm, assuming that I cant simply break an allegiance (Nietzsches Problem of the Past, in Nietzsche on Time and History, ed. Manuel Dries [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008], 88). It is unclear if this is what Richardson means because he merely explains it in terms of memory of a rule. Ido not take the story of memory in the second essay to be the story of our socialization (89). It is the story of a unique stage in human development, in which already social, linguistic, and reflective beings have had imperatives bred and burned into them that then enable them to burn imperatives into themselves, thereby giving rise to the SI. In any case, Richardsons view is that Nietzsche affirms the power and freedom in agency in his account of the sovereign individual (Nietzsches Freedoms, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, 142). 40. Owen also regards Nietzsche as simply concerned with second-order volitions (willing to will something) (Autonomy, Self-Respect, and Self-Love, 203). But having express, principled commitments (second-order cognitions) is not the same as promising. I can be committed to various tasks or ideas (second-order volitions) and release myself from them simply by changing my mind on further reflection. There are many forms of second-order volitions that are not promises: hopes, dreams, whims, expectations, and other variants of future-directed intentionality. Owen also claims that acquiring the ability to have second-order volitions is essential for there be normative expectations regarding the behavior of persons and that therefore it is central to personhood itself (203). But this seems false: I can have normative expectations about the behavior of my dog without attributing to it second-order volitions. 41. Searles analysis of the speech act of promising is helpful here. The essential condition is that S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A (What Is a Speech Act?, in Contemporary Analytic and Linguistic Philosophies, ed. E. D. Klemke, [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1965], 448). 42. Tracy Strong, for one, at least sees that what is at stake here is to be able to so bind oneself, or to find oneself bound (Nietzsche, the Will to Power, and the Weak Will, in Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present, ed. Tobias Hoffmann [Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2008], 246). 43. Gemes, Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual, 37; KenGemes, We Remain of Necessity Strangers to Ourselves: The Key Message of Nietzsches Genealogy, in Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals, 200. Gemes incorrectly argues that because we moderns are inheritors of slave morality and, therefore, have no free will that we should regard the SI as an ideal for the future (Nietzsche on Free Will, Autonomy, and the Sovereign Individual, 37). He says that we cannot guarantee that we can fulfill our promise because of our disorderly drives and so we must not be the SI. Of course we, the inheritors of slave

morality and asceticism, are part of a long history of weakening the drives: orderly drives and promising keeping are our expertise. But Gemes is right that no one can live up to the antinatural restriction of drives found in the SI. However, that state of affairs indicates that it is a target of criticism not of admiration. 44. In his response to Hatab, Janaway posits the SI as an actuality of the past that we might embody in some way in the future, a view he shares with Conway (Beyond Selflessness in Ethics and Inquiry, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 3536 [2008]: 130). But this overlooks the antinaturalism of the SI. 45. Janaway, Beyond Selflessness in Ethics and Inquiry, 130. Strangely, Simon Mays interpretation is that the SI is unattainable and undesirable as an ideal but also that the SI is the bermensch figure (Nietzsches Ethics and His War on Morality [Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1999], 66, 117). His main point is that the SI does not fit well with Nietzsches life-affirming values, and that is correct. But the identification of the SI and the bermensch seems incorrect to me. May does not think that the SI is presented as the subject of criticism in the second essay but rather just that Nietzsche is unsuccessful in characterizing his positive ideal in it. 46. Janaway, Beyond Selflessness in Ethics and Inquiry, 130. 47. See Kants notion to do justice, though the world perish (fiat iustitia, pereat mundus) in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795) (in Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary J. Gregor [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 345; for the original German, see Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, 23 vols. to date [Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900], 8:378). This is echoed by Nietzsche in GM III:7 where the ascetic philosopher proclaims, Pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam! (Let the world perish, let there be philosophy, let there be the philosopher, let there be me!) (GM III:7; KSA 5, p. 351). So I have to disagree with Acamporas remark that the SI is self-undermining in the sense that radical stress on autonomy and the hypercultivation of memory results in an individual who, as sovereign, no longer recognizes claims of moral law (On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 154). There is no reason to think that the SI overcomes morality, especially given the stringency of their duty to keep their promise. 48. It should be noted that Nietzsche introduces the SI by saying on the other hand (dagegen), without making clear what was on the one hand (GM II:2). There is a contrast here, but what is it? Nietzsches assertion that when we locate ourselves at the end of the process, we come upon the sovereign individual gives us several options. First, Nietzsche could mean, after the prehistory of making humanity calculable, let us turn now to the present. The second possibility is similar except it would place the SI in the future. The third possible meaning is that Nietzsche means to turn to the perversion of humanity through morality after having identified the true work of humanity on itself to be its becoming regular. The fourth possibility is that having identified the meaning and justification of history with the preconditions for the SI, Nietzsche intends to turn to that which cannot be justified as the meaning of our human history. Only the second option is acceptable for those who argue that the SI is Nietzsches ethical ideal, but it is not obvious that is the contrast being made. 49. Immanuel Kant Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, 83; Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, 4:434. 50. One can find Kaufmanns mistake, for example, in the work of Aaron Ridley (Nietzsches Intentions: What the Sovereign Individual Promises, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, 192) and R. Kevin Hill (Nietzsches Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought [Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2003], 219). 51. This point is one of the most significant made by Hatab (Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 78). 52. See Acampora On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 151, Hatab, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy, 38, and Lawrence Hatab, Breaking the Contract Theory: The Individual and the

Law in Nietzsches Genealogy, in Nietzsche, Power, and Politics, 7677, 80, for mention of the conflict between the SI and Nietzsches overall philosophy of the agent. 53. At the end of GM III:10, Nietzsche does seem to praise freedom of the will and a will to responsibility as a trait of the philosopher, which Hatab takes as evidence against his position (Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 125). But GM III:10 argues that there has been no philosopher in a Nietzschean sense so far and that all philosophers have been products of the ascetic tradition, so this praise must be scrutinized. The Nietzschean philosopher shares nothing with the SI, the latters sole concern and value being the keeping of promises. 54. Kaufmanns translation has misled numerous philosophers into valuing the SI because of the positive valence of earning the right to be the SI (e.g., Strong, Nietzsche, the Will to Power, and the Weak Will, 24548). Acampora argues that translations of the German phrase as the right to make promises makes the passage seem to be saying, falsely, that promise making is an entitlement (On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 14849). But even the correct translation of being allowed or permitted still carries the sense of its being an entitlement, and supporters of the SI have generally not relied on the positive valence of having a right to make their case. Her point that promising is a power or depends on a power does not preclude it being also considered an entitlement: entitlements are a granting of power and of responsibility. 55. One cannot overlook the discussion of bad conscience in GS 117, in which Nietzsche states that today one feels responsible only for ones will and actions, and one finds ones pride in oneself, which points to the person of Enlightenment heritage and the bad conscience in language quite similar to the SI passage. This person is also said to be a self and to esteem oneself according to ones own weight and measure which again is precisely what the SI is said to do. Ionly mention this to provide evidence that the traits of the SI are said to be a part of the present. 56. Both Ridley and Owen attempt to understand this embodiment of consciousness in the SI in terms of unreflective activity, that is, an activity that one has mastered to such an extent that there really is no gap between who one is and what one is doing, no reflective distance between thought and action (Aaron Ridley, Nietzsches Conscience: Six Character Studies from the Genealogy [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998], 145). Such an idea seems quite out of place in the discussion of the SI, and it means that when Nietzsche is talking about consciousness of power and freedom, he is actually talking about unself-conscious action. Strong attempts something similar, arguing that the SI is permitted to promise because in so doing one is offering a fundamental expression of ones nature, a declaration of what I am (Nietzsche, the Will to Power, and the Weak Will, 248). The problem with this line of interpretation is that it is unsupported by the text. The SI has no positive value except promise keeping itself: the SI is not given as a unique, artistic self-expressive being but as a brutal, rigid being who cares for nothing but keeping the promise. 57. Leiter gives an excellent, textually based argument as to why Nietzsche rejects the phenomenology of willing as sufficient for determining whether an act or person is free (Nietzsches Theory of the Will, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, 10726). 58. Scare quotes are introduced here around the word free. Why else but to bring it into question? Solomon at least notices the scare quotes and recognizes that if this is Kantian freedom then Nietzsche regards it sarcastically (Living With Nietzsche: What the Great Immoralist Has to Teach Us [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], 198). But he does not conclude that the passage is challenging such an idea of freedom and instead says that Nietzsche is showing here that he has respect and admiration for the notions of responsibility (199). 59. To say, as May does, that the SIs actions are one of respect of ones own sovereignly legislated values, those values that our fatedness has, as it were, built into us and whose necessity we will is completely unsupported by the text (Nihilism and the Free Self, in Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, 104). It assumes that the SI is a nonascetic ideal whose values may include life and the will to power. But all that we know from the passage, the only value that the

SI is said to possess, is the value of promising itself. The SI is not looking to its nature and its fundamental passions and values but to the value of promising. 60. This argument applies to willing itself, which is why I object to attempts to put a positive spin on the SI by arguing that Nietzschean autonomy is the will to will (White, Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty, 72). What must be specified is the content of what is willed. The will to will sounds more like the nihilism of the ascetic priests who want to save the notion of the will regardless of what is willed. 61. Immanuel Kant, On the Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy, in Practical Philosophy, 612; Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, 8:426. 62. As Hatab points out, it is not at all clear why, from a Nietzschean perspective, such punishment is doled out (Breaking the Contract Theory, 82). Conway envisions Nietzsche as snickering at the idea that the ability to promise ensures freedom and argues that what would be closer to Nietzsches conception of a supramoral sovereign individual is the criminal (Nietzsche and the Political [London: Routledge, 1997], 17). 63. Elements such as this within the description of the SI conflict in every way Nietzsches actual positive ethic. But this regularly passes without comment, even as such contradictions enter into the reconstructions of Nietzsches ideal. For example, Janaway can identify the SI with the ideal of GM II:24 and with the Dionysian or Goethean ideal proclaimed in the Twilight of the Idols, even though the SI shares no features with those figures. Trusting fate and allowing oneself a multitude of drives and affects, even conflicting ones, are key notions of Nietzsches positive Goethean ideal and not the SI (Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsches Genealogy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 118). 64. Owen and Ridley argue that the SIs unique form of promising is one whereby a person does not just agree to carry out the promise, all things being equal, but to indemnify the promise against the ceteris paribus clause altogether, so that the intention is executed regardless (Ridley, Nietzsches Intentions, 186; Owen, Autonomy, Self-Respect, and Self-Love, 207). Ibelieve that this still misses the way that a promise binds and obligates, creating an obligation in the will that is no longer simply up to us. The SI promises in a way that is much more radical than Owen and Ridley propose. Their idea is that of a whole-hearted commitment whereby we do not simply intend to fulfill the promise as present conditions allow but will to resist changes in future conditions and still keep our promise (Ridley, Nietzsches Intentions, 186). Yet they also state that there are conditions that will invalidate the promise, for example, finding that the original promise was unrealizable, given the circumstances as they turned out to be or finding .. . that there was not, after all, an intention on the part of the promiser to do such and such (i.e., fallibility about the reasonableness and possibility of what was promised and about the intentions/ desires of the promiser) (Ridley, Nietzsches Intentions, 190). The problem with this is that goes against everything that is said about the SI. The justification given for their conception of the SIs promising is not that it is supported by the text but rather that it is realistic, makes the SI a human possibility, and fits well with other things Nietzsches says about ethical action. But that just begs the question against the person who denies that the SI is not Nietzsches ideal at all. 65. I will not dwell on the conflict between the idea of having power over fate and Nietzsches positive ideal of loving ones fate, which is one of the main points made by Acampora (On Sovereignty and Overhumanity, 152) and Hatab (A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy, 38, and Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morality, 77). To rely on the interpretation of amor fati to support ones reading of the SI allows the defenders of the SI to provide a more flexible reading of the love of fate (see Janaway, Beyond Selflessness in Ethics and Inquiry, 130). 66. Owens reading of the passages where the SI is said to be necessary and to be the master of nature, fate, and all circumstances is the following: The sovereign individual is characterized by a degree of prudence in its commitment-making activity (that is, a serious effort to consider, as far as possible, the types of circumstance in which the commitment is to be honored and the range

of costs that may arise fulfillment of the commitment as well as its prospects for conflicting with existing commitments), where this prudence is engendered precisely by an acknowledgment of ones responsibility as extending to those occasions on which the commitment cannot or must not be honored. Upholding ones word even against fate does not mean fantastically committing oneself to the incoherent goal of doing what is causally or ethically impossible for one to do, it means willingly bearing responsibility for the damage incurred when ones commitment cannot or must not be kept (Autonomy, Self-Respect, and Self-Love, 207). Owen is correct that the alternative interpretation of these remarks is that they come out to be absurd, but that is why Nietzsche is not endorsing the SI. 67. Regularly, traits are associated with the SI that simply do not fit with the given description. For example, Alan Schrifts analysis of Nietzschean subjectivity as a continual becoming, activity, and progression, simply does not fit with the SI as the promise keeper par excellence, who will let nothingnot fate, nature, or any aspect of external realityalter his promise. Schrift attributes this conception of subjectivity to the SI nonetheless (Rethinking the Subject; or, How One Becomes-Other Than What One Is, in Nietzsches Postmoralism, ed. Richard Schacht [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 59). White does the same, attributing to the SI absolute openness to the world, an attunement to the ecstatic impulses of life, a refusal to be limited by any kind of fixed identity, adopting Goethes approach to life and the cosmos, risking ones identity at every moment, and so on (Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty, 8, 2023). Although all these ideas are part of Nietzsches positive ideal, they are positively at odds with the SI description.

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The "Sovereign Individual" and the "Ascetic Ideal": On a Perennial Misreading of the Second Essay of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy

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The Sovereign Individual and the Ascetic Ideal

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Sovereignty in the Nachlass

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Suppression, Promising, and Hominization

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The History of Responsibility and the SI as Its Ideal

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The SI and the Morality of Custom

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The SI and the Will

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The SIs Standard of Value and Relations to Others

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The SI as Master of Nature and Fate

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The SI and Conscience

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