Feeling, Not Freedom: Nietzsche Against Agency

This paper argues that although Nietzsche’s rejection of free will leaves no room for a morally substantial, compatibilist conception of freedom of agency, freedom nevertheless plays an important role in his positive moral philosophy, since Nietzsche’s higher human types are characterized by a heightened feeling of freedom—a qualitative affect without deeper substance. Moreover, because the feeling of freedom is increased by resistance, it requires a limitation of practical freedom—a relative constraint of ability, strength, and activity rather than their absolute promotion. Nietzsche’s higher types are, if anything, less free than others. Consequently, his criterion for human enhancement cannot be that of quantitatively greater freedom, power, or agency. Rather, it is measured according to the intensity of an individual’s feelings of freedom, agency and power, and of the love of fate that the illusory feeling of freedom promotes.