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Polity * Volume 38, Number 4 * October 2006

(0 2006 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/06 $30.00www.palgrave-journals.com/polity

Nietzsche's Radicalizationof Kant*

William W. SokoloffChapman University College, Santa Maria Valley Campus

According to liberals and postmodernists, Nietzsche and Kant occupy opposingplaces on the theoretical spectrum. I challenge this assumption and argue thatNietzsche is working both with and against Kant in terms of his new moralityNietzsche's harsh rhetoric against Kant serves as a mask that, on closerexamination, conceals similarities. Through an analysis of some of his texts,I demonstrate that Nietzsche works within a Kantian conception of moral autonomyin terms of two of his most provocative formulations: pathos of distance and law oflife. Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment, moreover illustrates his commitment toKantian assumptions about moral conduct. Bringing Kant and Nietzsche togetheryields a new image of autonomy that overcomes the sovereign subjectivity centralto the Kantian conception.Polity 2006) 38, 501-518. doi:10. 057/palgrave.polity.2300061

Keywords autonomy; experience; Kant; law; Nietzsche; pathos ofdistance; ressentiment

William W Sokoloff is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at ChapmanUniversity College, Santa Maria Valley Campus. He has published in the AmericanJournal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, heory & Event, andPolitical Theory. He is currently working on a book entitled Right of Resistance. Hecan be reached at

[email protected].

Introduction

Nietzsche does not reject morality but re-figures t beyond good and evil andalongside a Kantian conception of autonomy.' He does not stay within Kant's

*The author thanks Amanda Roya Modesta-Keyhani, Nicholas Xenos, Susan Shell, Karen Zivi,E.C. Graf, O. Bradley Bassler, an anonymous Polity reviewer, and the editor for comments on earlier drafts

of this article. I also thank the librarians at Whittier College for allowing me to use the library1. Nietzsche citations refer to sections and not pages. I use the following abbreviations: GT = Birth of

Tragedy, rans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); UB = Unfashionable Observations,trans. Richard T Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); MA (I & II) = Human, All Too Human,trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); M=Daybreak, trans. R. J.





502 NIETZSCHE/KANT

framework or practical reason but radicalizes t. This is clear in terms of his

critique f ressentiment, resentation fpathos fdistance, nd articulation f anew foundation for ethical practice. Nietzsche's radicalization of Kant overcomessome of the shortcomings of his Prussian forefather and challenges the wayNietzsche has been received among liberal and postmodern political theorists.2For liberals, Nietzsche is an irrational, sadistic, and undemocratic political thinkerof dubious worth. For postmodernists, Nietzsche is valuable because he doesaway with transcendental ground and frees the subject from conventionalmorality Both camps have clouded his significance for rethinking autonomybecause they view him as rejecting law. My essay scrambles the association of

Nietzsche with postmodernism and Kant with liberal thought (and opens a spacebetween and slightly beyond the two sides) insofar as it demonstrates theprofound affinity between Kant and Nietzsche on the question of autonomy

Interrogating autonomy in Nietzsche's writings (with Kant in the background)could help to forge a dialogue between liberal and postmodernist readers of hiswork. It also raises the stakes of what it means to be an autonomous moral agent.Nietzsche does not conceive of the human as an amoral blonde beast but as ahistorically constructed free agent capable of autonomous action. The persistentclaim that Nietzsche breaks with Kant is not only inaccurate in this regard but

prevents a fundamental aspect of Nietzsche's thought from being clarified. In thewords of Nancy, reading Kant in Nietzsche is "indispensable."'3

Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); FW= The Gay Science, trans. WalterKaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974); JGB = Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1989); GM= On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); GD = Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1968); AC=Antichrist, trans. R. J. Hollindale (New York: Penguin Books, 1968);EH=Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); PTG =Philosophy in theTragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1962); WM= Will

to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968); WL = "On Truthand Lie in a Non-Moral Sense" in Philosophy and Truth: elections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the early1870s, ed and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1979);Z= Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1961).

2. Postmodernists find Nietzsche appealing because he criticizes sovereign subjectivity andembraces becoming. They find Kant unappealing because he subjugates the empirical world to thetranscendental realm. For the relationship between Nietzsche and postmodernism, see LawrenceJ. Hateb, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics (Chicago: OpenCourt, 1995) and Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).Liberals find Kant appealing because he defends rights-based conceptions of politics. See Rawls,"Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" The Journal of Philosophy 77 (September 1980). They findNietzsche unappealing for the reasons listed above. See also Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and

Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Jilrgen Habermas, The PhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,1987) for interpretations that emphasize Nietzsche's corrosive effect on moral discourse.

3. Jean-Luc Nancy "Our Probity! On Truth in the Moral Sense in Nietzsche,"' rans. Peter Connor, inLooking after Nietzsche, ed. Laurence A. Rickels (Albany: State University of New York Press), 80.





William W. Sokoloff 503

The reason why commentators overlook the connection between Kant

and Nietzsche is simple.4 The closest Nietzsche came to directly working onKant was an abandoned 1868 project called "Zur Teleologie" After that, Nietzschecriticizes Kantian precepts calling him, among other things, a "moral fanatic,'"scarecrow," "philosopher for civil servants,' "moralist, "cunning Christian,'and "deformed conceptual cripple" (WM I 95; WM I 127; GD "Expeditions" 29;AC 10; GD "Reason" 6; GD "Germans" 7). Nietzsche never misses anopportunity to rail against the "horrible scholasticism" of Kant (GD "Expeditions"49). Despite the polemical rhetoric, Nietzsche's relation to Kant is morecomplicated than these quotes from his later writings suggest.5 As Deleuze

states, "there is, in Nietzsche, not only a Kantian heritage, but a half-avowed,half-hidden, rivalry.6

We can understand Nietzsche in a more profound way if we entertain thepossibility that he and Kant are doing something similar, if to different degrees.Indeed, we see a radicalization of Kant taking place in Nietzsche, especially interms of his re-conceptualization of human autonomy Nietzsche's concept ofautonomy radicalizes Kant because it displaces sovereign subjectivity. After Iexamine Nietzsche's views on ressentiment, pathos of distance, and law, I contestBernstein's and Connolly's readings of Nietzsche in order to make the case for

Nietzschean autonomy Nietzschean autonomy overcomes the shortcomingsof the Kantian version and re-positions Nietzsche's significance beyond both theliberal and postmodern interpretations of his work.

4. Even if Nietzsche's understanding of Kant was filtered through Arthur Schopenhauer's The Worldas Will and Representation (1844), F A. Lange's History of Materialism (1866) and Kuno Fischer's Kant(1866), many authors prematurely shy away from the connection. That Nietzsche denounces Kant isaccepted at face value. For David Owen, Nietzsche attacks Kant's conception of morality; see "Nietzsche,Enlightenment and the Problem of Noble Ethics,' in Nietzsche's Futures, ed. John Lippett (London:

MacMillan Press Ltd., 1999). Keith Ansell-Pearson opposes bringing Kant and Nietzsche together in"Nietzsche: A Radical Challenge to Political Theory;" Radical Philosophy 54 (Spring 1990). Ansell-Pearsonalso maintains that "Nietzsche's thinking on justice...runs counter to the entire modern tradition fromRousseau to Kant and Hegel"; see "Toward he comedy of existence: On Nietzsche's new justice," n TheFate of the New Nietzsche, ed. Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Aldershot, UK: Avebury Press, 1993).William E. Connolly places Kant and Nietzsche on opposite sides of the political spectrum. This isdiscussed later. In contrast to the tendency to separate Nietzsche and Kant, J. M. Bernstein discusses Kantand Nietzsche in terms of autonomy See '"Autonomy nd Solitude," in Nietzsche and Modern GermanThought, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (New York: Routledge, 1991).

5. It is untrue that Nietzsche rejects "the great Chinese of Koenigsberg" (JGB 210). In a spirit similarto Kant, Nietzsche maintains: "To grasp the limits of reason-only this is truly philosophy" (AC 55). Recall"Kant's oke" in Gay Science: "Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man,

that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of his soul. He wrote against the scholars insupport of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people" (FW 193).

6. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1983), 52. He also claims that "Nietzsche's relation to Kant is like Marx's o Hegel"; 89. This flip-flopcomparison obscures the specificity of each relationship.






signs-otherwise you are dangerous. We despise the secret and unrecognizable"

(WM II 277).Nietzsche claims that "the actual physiological cause of ressentiment" is

a "desire to deaden pain by means of affects" (GM III 15). With ressentiment,the body becomes its own enemy. Sensibility wages war against itself. Mr.Ressentiment is a prisoner of human sensibility, comparable not to the dog whochases its own tail but to the dog who bites it. Unable to forget and sublimate paininto creative activities that discharge it, slaves feel all events as insults and injuries:

One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel

anything-everythinghurts. Men and

thingsobtrude too

closely; experiencesstrike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound. (EH "Wise" 6)

Getting over something depends on the capacity to embrace the unexpectedturns of human experience. The failure to change in response to events thatfrustrate our expectations generates ressentiment: "The wish to preserve oneself isthe symptom of a condition of distress" (FW 349).

Ressentiment is not only prone to infect the self who posits itself as a fixed

identity but it gives birth to moral codes that sprout from wounded subjectivity.It propels the subject to create values from a defensive relation to the world:

The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creativeand gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the truereaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginaryrevenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmationof itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside:' what is"different:' what is "not me"; and this No is its creative deed. (GM I 10)

Slave revolt in morality undermines the possibility of autonomous action because

it internalizes the drive for outward expansion. Slaves cannot act. They wantrevenge. Nietzsche defines Mr. Ressentiment as one who "understands how to

keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-

deprecating and humble" (GM I 10). Once self-denial reaches its breaking point,the stage is set for reactive attacks against perceived enemies. In contrast to theKantian imperative of self-legislation, the slave receives his ground for action froman external source and then creates moral categories that value reactivity.Incapable of being the source of his own grounds for practice, objects determinehis actions. He is only capable of "re-action."'8

8. It is instructive to recall Kant's definition of heteronomy. Like ressentiment, heteronomy refers toinstances when the will does not give itself the law but receives the ground for practice from an object.See Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997), 47.





506 NIETZSCHE/KANT

Pathos of Distance: Feeling is Not a Name

Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment should not be viewed as a terminusbut as a preparatory task. The outstanding question is how ressentimentcan be overcome. Nietzsche does not appeal to the supersensible realmas the ground for practice to overcome ressentiment but presents the possibilityof a non-reactive mode of human affectivity (pathos of distance) as thealternative. Pathos of distance is an aesthetic-affective dimension of experiencethat suspends the pull of ressentiment.' This feeling elevates the humanabove pathological determination but without severing the link to sensibility

It moves Nietzsche closer to Kant and also paves the way for Nietzsche's turnto law.

As early as 1873 in "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense'," Nietzsche triesto articulate a feeling that would put the stability of the conceptual orderpermanently into question. The "Truth nd Lie" essay, in this regard, is a critiqueof the concept in order to open a space for life in an extra-moral sense.Deconstructing the conceptual world was the first step to human liberation.Concepts, "graveyard of perceptions" (WL 2), prevent humans from feeling theuniqueness of life. They impose commonality on dissimilar entities in order to

help the human cope with complexity through the "identification of the non-identical."10 The world is given the illusion of comprehensibility throughconceptual violence but becomes disenchanted in the process. Thinking inconcepts may be impossible to totally escape but concepts nonetheless preventhumans from feeling the force of the unique. Panicked by incursions ofotherness, clutching concepts as a way to assail it, the human is de-sensitized andprepared for battle. Out of fear, he imprisons the world in cognitive

9. Oliver Conolly in "Pity Tragedy and the Pathos of Distance" defines pathos of distance as "thepainful distance that necessarily lies between my suffering and that of others"; in European Journal ofPhilosophy 6 (December 1998): 290. In Nietzsche and the Political, Conway states: "The pathos of distancesignifies an enhanced sensibility for, or attunement to, the order of rank that "naturally"informs herich plurality of human types" He continues: "The over-arching goal of his politics is to preserve thediminished pathos of distance that ensures the possibility of ethical life and moral development in latemodernity" (New York: Routledge, 1997), 40, 47. In a more critical vein, Bernstein suggests that thepathos of distance is a "perpetual distancing of the self from itself that enforces solitude, mask, andirony"; see '"Autonomy nd Solitude,"' 13. Interpretations of pathos of distance can also be found in thework of Sarah Kofman and Werner Hamacher. For the former, the metaphor of the abyss is a metaphor forpathos of distance; see Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor, rans. Duncan Large (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press), 20. For Hamacher, pathos of distance refers to a moment when "the will is no longer

one with itself." For him, "individuality speaks from the undecidability between determination andindeterminacy thus from a 'pathos of distance'"; see Werner Hamacher, Premises.: Essays on Philosophyand Literature rom Kant to Celan, trans. Peter Fenves (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996),121, 176.

10. Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor, 36.






compartments. Nietzsche contrasts "rational man,' or Mr. Concept, with "intuitive

man." Mr. Intuition

Reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer,and redemption-in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To besure, he suffers more intensely when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently,since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps fallingover and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational n sorrow ashe is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. (WL 2)

Mr. Intuition lives cheerfully. The external world does not suffer from theprojection of rational forms, but remains a source of wonder because it has notbeen transformed into objects of knowledge. Intuitive man nonetheless suffersbecause he adopts a non-pragmatic approach to life. He is unable to learn from

experience because he fails to calculate and base future actions on past ones. Hetrusts his feelings and he reaps the harvest of cheerfulness but he "keeps fallingover and over again into the same ditch." However, what exactly does he feel?Nietzsche answers: "There exists no word for these intuitions; when man seesthem he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in

unheard-of combinations of concepts" (WL 2).Nietzsche locates an expression for these intuitions in Beyond Good and Evil.

Straining language to its limit, Nietzsche calls it "pathos of distance:"

Every enhancement of the type "man" has so far been the work of an aristocratic

society-and it will be so again and again-a society that believes in the longladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, andthat needs slavery in some sense or other. Without that pathos of distance which

grows out of the ingrained difference between strata-when the ruling caste

constantlylooks afar and looks down

upon subjectsand instruments and

justas

constantly practices obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at adistance-that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either-the craving for an ever widening of distances within the soul itself, the

development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more

comprehensive states-in brief, simply the enhancement of the type "man'the continual "self-overcoming f man,' to use a moral formula in a supra-moralsense. To be sure, one should not yield to humanitarian illusions about the

origins of an aristocratic society (and thus of the presupposition of thisenhancement of the

type "man"):ruth is hard."

(JGB 257)11. Why is truth hard, as opposed to cheerful? As we shall see, pathos of distance is the condition of

possibility of affirming new experiences that establishes its connection with the intuitions Nietzschestrains to name in 1873.





508 NIETZSCHE/KANT

Nietzsche distinguishes between two types of distance: "pathos of distance" and

"that other, more mysterious pathos," one with distance within the soul itself.Pathos of distance grows out of the "ingrained difference between strata" andflourishes in aristocratic societies. That other "more mysterious pathos" facilitatescontinual self-overcoming. After introducing pathos of distance, Nietzsche goeson to point out the benefits and dangers of distance.

At a time when differences between people were compromised by thedemands of equality and social democracy, Nietzsche argues that re-establishingdistances could hold the homogenizing tendencies of his age within properlimits.12A certain level of distance interrupts identification and may even permit

one to see something more objectively. And yet, Nietzsche realizes that distanceisolates. In the chapter "The Free Spirit" in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzscheadvises his reader "not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to thatvoluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to seeever more below him-the danger of the flier" (JGB 41). Taken to its extreme,a self with too much distance is disengaged, irresponsible, and incapable offeeling. However, disavowing distance altogether risks compromising spacebetween self and other. In pathos of distance, Nietzsche invents a feeling thatavoids the pitfalls inherent to both distance and proximity. Distance need not

imply sovereign mastery over one's environment; pathos is not identical withpathological determination and reactivity. As a feeling that signals engagementwith world but without being determined by it, pathos of distance points to thepossibility of an open-ended relation to one's self, other, and world. Hence, itgenerates receptivity and a sense of expectation.

Pathos of distance, then, is an enhanced sensibility for the transience of lifethat allows the particularity of entities to appear. Proximity and conceptssuffocate and grind down world and other. The possibility of experience isbetrayed when we fail to recognize that we stand too close to someone or

something, when we domesticate the particularity of entities with generalformulas of cognition. The will to immediacy and drive for familiarity annihilatesexperience:

Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus byreproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before,instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. The latterwould require more strength, more

"morality." Hearing something new is

12. Even though Nietzsche criticizes equality and democracy, this does not necessarily mean he isan enemy of democracy As Wendy Brown notes, Nietzsche's critique of democracy may prevent liberaldemocracy from becoming self-satisfied, dogmatic, and reactive: "Nietzsche is the antidemocraticthinker whom democracy cannot live without"; see Politics out of History (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2001), 137.






embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well.

When we hear another language we try involuntarily to form the sounds wehear into words that sound more familiar and more like home to us. (JGB 192)

Whether it is with a new language or new music, projecting the familiar onto theunfamiliar is a tactic of domination. The yearning for comfort transforms thestructural openness of the ear into a filtering device that homogenizes the non-identical. Scratch the surface of the will to comfort and one finds panic that islinked to the need to contain the world. The new is a threat necessitatingcolonization and subjection. Anything that lacks a determinate place must be

given one. Old images are projected onto new phenomenon in order to fendthem off. The will to comfort makes one deaf and blind. For Nietzsche, we need"new eyes for the most distant things" and "new ears for new music" (ACForeword).

Distance, not the search for comfort, is the condition of possibility of

experience because it allows the new to come forth. It cultivates openness and

receptivity to otherness. Registering what is new and different in an impressiondepends on one's willingness to be transformed. In order to be transformed, onemust cultivate the art of distance. This is the mark of one's strength: "With the

strength of his spiritual eye and insight grows distance and, as it were, the spacearound man: his world becomes more profound; ever new stars, ever new riddlesand images become visible for him" (JGB 57). Riddles are invisible and stars areunseen when the human grinds down experiences to fit pre-established schemas.Distance allows them to appear.

In contrast to pathos of distance, ressentiment constitutes a subject ready for

revenge. Revenge on others and on oneself is the result of the incapacity to affirmthe existential pain that inescapably accompanies human experience. Operatingon a register similar to Kantian respect, pathos of distance holds the subject in

a state of suspension; it does not produce determinate action. This is clear inNietzsche's ideal of nobility. Nobles are always one step above determinationfrom empirical sources.13 This is why Nietzsche claims that nobles respect theirenemies as opportunities for productive engagement. They are not determined to

despise them. For nobles, enemies may give us a new way of seeing ourselves thatcan lead to self-overcoming. Slaves do not engage their enemies but pray for their

untimely demise. For slaves, their enemy is evil because it is a source ofdiscomfort. Mr. Ressentiment "has conceived 'the evil enemy,' 'the Evil One, andthis in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves" (GM I 10).

13. Recall Kant's conception of autonomy as non-empirically generated self-legislation. The closestKant comes to devising an empirical basis for morality is the feeling of respect. For the paradoxicalcharacter of Kantian respect, see my "Kant and the Paradox of Respect," American Journal of PoliticalScience 45 (October 2001).





510 NIETZSCHE/KANT

If affirming one's enemies illustrates the noble capacity to rise above

immediate stimuli, the incapacity to resist a stimulus is reactive, a symptom of"vulgarity" GD "Germans" 6). Filled with life and passion, nobles do not have toreceive external affirmation because they do it spontaneously They are distantand distance announces the possibility of human freedom: "For what is freedom?That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance whichdivides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation,even to life" (GD "Expeditions" 38). The preservation of the "distance whichdivides us" is not a formula for civil war but the condition for relations groundedon the art of "separating without setting against one another" (EH "Clever" ).14

A community grounded on distance is a paradoxical conception only if oneconceives of community as commonality Nietzsche replaces oppositionalgroupings grounded on ressentiment with non-oppositional relations in orderto invent a community grounded on distance, not commonality: "It s not howone soul approaches another but in how it distances itself from it that I recognizetheir affinity and relatedness" (MA II 251). The art of distance marks the quality of

relations.15 Distance ruptures the drive for homogeneity, recognition, andidentification. Distance also interrupts the cognitive colonization of the other.The quality of the relation with the other depends on the capacity to affirm the

other as other, even if it threatens our identity As a non-reactive feeling, pathosof distance does not involve oppositional but affirmative relations: "Establishdistances, but create no antitheses" (WM IV 891).16 And yet, these relations findtheir ground in separation. Pathos of distance is the "will to be oneself, to standout" (GD "Expeditions" 37).

Standing out suspends the imperative of equality that grinds down differencesbetween dissimilar entities. Nietzsche criticizes the instinct of homogenization inequality because he sees it as an attack on justice.17 The call for equality is notneutral and innocent but conceals the desire for revenge. It lacks an appreciation

of the "between;' the critical distance that lets entities be what they are. As aconcept form, equality is a declaration of war that eradicates individual aspects

14. Jacques Derrida asks how a politics of separation could be founded that would not give into proximity and identification. See Politics of Friendship, rans. George Collins (New York: Verso, 1997),55, 65.

15. See Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "My brothers, I do not exhort you to love of your neighbor: I exhortyou to love of the most distant" (Z I "Of Love of One's Neighbor").

16. For how distance could be the condition for relation, see Maurice Blanchot's Friendship, rans.Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). For Blanchot, our friends reserve "an

infinite distance, the fundamental separation on the basis of which what separates becomes relation"; 291.17. For Nietzsche, equality endangers justice: "The doctrine of equality! But there exists no morepoisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the termination ofjustice.. .'Equality for equals, inequality for unequals'-that would be the true voice of justice.. .'Nevermake equal what is unequal'" (GD "Expeditions" 48).






and naturalizes mediocrity. This prevents the emergence of individuals who

exceed common measures:

"Equality,"certain actual rendering similar of which the theory of "equal

rights" is only the expression, belongs essentially to decline: the chasmbetween man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to beoneself, to stand out-that which I call pathos of distance-characterizes everystrong age. The tension, the range between the extremes is today growing lessand less-the extremes themselves are finally obliterated to the point ofsimilarity. (GD "Expeditions" 37)

Equality is an attack on multiplicity and a symptom of decline that annihilatesindividuality. Sustaining the tension between extremes is necessary because itfosters difference. In this regard, Nietzsche's critique of equality is the affirmationof plurality. Whether this constitutes a rejection of democracy is discussed later.Nietzschean plurality requires one to stand out and be who one is. This requirescourage: "No one any longer possesses today the courage to claim specialprivileges or the right to rule, the courage to feel a sense of reverence towardshimself and towards his equals-the courage for a pathos of distance" (AC 43).

Genealogy deepens Nietzsche's depiction of pathos of distance:

The pathos of nobility and distance...the protracted and domineeringfundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation toa lower order, to a "below"-that is the origin of the antithesis "good" and"bad" (GM 12)

The "good/evil" value antithesis sprouts from ressentiment; pathos of nobility anddistance generates "good/bad" valuations. In the "good/evil" dichotomy, good is

only the after-effect of a designation that labels someone evil. The denigration ofthe other is the basis for the elevation of the self. In the "good/bad" opposition,calling something good emerges independently Putting someone down is not theprecondition for self-elevation. The distinction "good/bad" overcomes theoppositional morality of slaves ("good/evil") because nobles affirm their owncritique as a source of pleasure: "The superior spirit takes pleasure in the acts oftactlessness, arrogance, even hostility perpetuated against him" (MA I 339). Outof the feeling of distance, nobles create the "good/bad" value antithesisindependently of all external grounds. It was not slaves who spontaneously

created values:

It was "the good" themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationedand high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as





512 NIETZSCHE/KANT

good, that is, of the first rank. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first

seized the right to create values and to coin names for values. (GM I 2)Nietzsche does not argue that nobles have free reign because they feel

differently He connects pathos of distance to ethical obligations. First, nobleshave a "readiness for great responsibilities" and "the affable protection anddefense of whatever is misunderstood and slandered, whether it is a god or devil"(JGB 213). Second, noble philosophers have an obligation to the future: "Themost comprehensive responsibility . .conscience for the over-all development ofman" (JGB 61). Pathos of distance also disrupts instrumental relationships thatperpetuate sovereign mastery and degrade others as objects:

The higher ought not to degrade itself to the status of an instrument of thelower, the pathos of distance ought to keep their tasks eternally separate! They[nobles] alone are our warranty for the future, they alone are obligated for thefuture of man. (GM III 14)

For Nietzsche, the future of human existence is threatened if nobles are degradedas tools. Kant also prohibits instrumental relationships.'" Both authors areconcerned with human dignity, even if Nietzsche's opposition between noblesand slaves seems to undermine it. Treating humans as objects robs them ofautonomy.19

It would be difficult to miss a certain resemblance between pathos of distanceand Kantian respect. Pathos of distance is, among other things, a condition ofpossibility of experience, an imperative of individuality, a critique of equality, andan affirmation of value creation. It is a strange feeling because it de-constitutesthe subject and generates receptivity. It is, moreover, a feeling of our "conclusivetransitoriness" (M 49). On these points, pathos of distance is not equivalent toKantian respect. And yet, both pathos of distance and respect require a certaindistance from empirical reality and are potential antidotes for nihilism. For Kant,"The principle of mutual love admonishes men constantly to come closer to oneanother; that of respect they owe one another, to keep themselves at a distancefrom one another."'20 Nietzsche, in contrast to Kant, grounds distance on pathos,

18. For Kant, "all rational beings stand under the law that each of them is to treat himself and allothers never merely as means but always at the same time as ends in themselves" Kant, Groundwork, 41.

19. In Groundwork, Kant states: "In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignityWhat has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raisedabove all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity"; 42. Kant continues: "Autonomy s the

ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature"; 43.20. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991), 244. The rest of the quote reads: "Should one of these great moral forces fail, 'thennothingness (immorality), with gaping throat, would drink up the whole kingdom of (moral) beings likea drop of water'"






a mode of distinctly human embodiment that is more worldly than ethereal

Kantian respect.Nietzsche's distinction between nobles/slaves (in contrast to Kant's more

egalitarian tenor) may be one of the reasons why liberals embrace Kant and arereluctant to take Nietzsche seriously There is also evidence to suggest that thereis something too ingrained about pathos of distance implying that it is passeddown through the correct breeding habits of an ethical aristocracy DismissingNietzsche on these grounds may be understandable but it would nevertheless bea mistake. There is more evidence to suggest that pathos of distance is self-

generated, not ingrained. It is what one feels as an autonomous agent.

Nietzsche's apparent contempt for some of the core values of democraticculture, moreover, should not be construed as the rejection of democracyHis critique of equality can actually strengthen democracy insofar as it incites,in the words of Wendy Brown, a "richer practice of democracy.'21 Specifically,Nietzsche is a "useful interlocutor of democracy offering precisely the challengethat might lead democracy to 'climb' in the manner Nietzsche insisted was thesole purview of culture."22 We should entertain the possibility that ressentiment isthe real threat to democracy insofar as it prevents the type of independentthought and action that democracies depend on for political invention. Far

from destroying democracy, Nietzsche might be able to keep us on thelookout for traces of ressentiment in the political sphere so that they can beidentified, engaged, and negotiated politically. Nietzsche's own form of nine-

teenth-century ressentiment should not be mistaken for iron fist hostility forthe demos. Pathos of distance is not a sickness triggered by democracyand aristocratic indifference to the suffering of the weak but an elevatingsensibility that allows one to make distinctions (EH "The Case of Wagner" 4).Pathos of distance is Nietzsche's alternative to ressentiment and is connectedto his defense of autonomy.

Law of Life: A New Law

Nietzsche has a profound interest in law that dates back to his writings fromthe 1870s and continues in his later work.23 In Daybreak, Nietzsche claims we

21. Brown, Politics out of History, 136. For Brown, "Liberal democracy rarely submits its cardinalvalues of mass equality and tolerance to interrogation without dismissing such challenges as anti-democratic"; 136.

22. Brown, Politics out of History, 136.

23. In his unpublished notebooks dating from the time of Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche claims that"Perishing and coming into being are governed by laws"; see Nietzsche, Unpublished Writings rom the

period of Unfashionable Observations, trans. Richard T Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995),103. In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche praises Heraclitus because he saw the

"teaching of law in becoming" (PTG 8). In Birth ofTragedy,

e refers to the "law of eternal justice" (GT 25).





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must "construct anew the laws of life and action" (M 453). At this point in his

thinking, it was not clear what these laws of life and action would be. Onepossibility appears in Will to Power as the call for a law of critique. Nietzscheviews this as the most sublime form of morality: "This demand for a critiqueof morality, as precisely your present form of morality, the sublimest form ofmorality" (WM II 399). The law demanding a critique of morality was incompletebecause it lacked an affirmative dimension. He argues that only a law with acritical as well as an affirmative component could adequately ground moralpractice.

The reason for Nietzsche's hesitation is obvious. Given his critique of

transcendental norms that suffocate the creaturely aspects of humanity, howcould Nietzsche reconcile the demand for law with his own critique of therepressiveness lurking in law? After all, Nietzsche criticizes law getting out ofcontrol and negating expressions of life. Legal orders that prevent all struggle are"hostile to life" and "assassinate the future of man" (GM II 11). And yet, "lawrepresents on earth...the struggle against the reactive feelings" (GOM II 11).Nietzsche does not reject law but nor does he praise it unreflectively. He has toinvent a law that affirms life, battles reactive outbursts of ressentiment, and opensspaces of self-transformation.

Nietzsche envisions this type of law in the concluding pages of GenealogySimilar to Kant's categorical imperative, Nietzsche's new law is not concernedwith the result of action but with the principle for ethical conduct. Hitherto,the will grounded itself on ascetic ideals because it lacked meaning andpurpose. Ascetic ideals give the will a goal in order to overcome thecurse of meaninglessness, but ascetic ideals negate the possibility of worldlyhappiness and beauty Nietzsche does not turn the world right side upand provide new ground for the will in the realm of sensibility Groundingpractical ethics in this way was still, as he states in an 1868 fragment "On Ethics',"

"like a doctor who is merely combating symptoms."24 Taking directives fromthe empirical world is incompatible with self-legislation and risks perpe-tuating ressentiment. If practice cannot ground itself in the empirical world,Nietzsche's critique of Christianity rules out transcendental solutionsbecause they hold the human up to standards that devalue the worldliness ofthe human condition. Nietzsche's solution had to be non-empirical butwithout resulting in a loss of sensibility; non-transcendental but without breakingthe link to law.

Nietzsche's "law of life" bridges the gap between the empirical and

transcendental realms and maintains them in a state of reciprocal tension; this

24. Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1 (Munich, Germany: Musarion Ausgabe, 1922), 404 [mytranslation].






collision grounds practice. It calls for modes of action oriented to liberating

the self:All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-

overcoming: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the necessity of "self-overcoming" in the nature of life-the lawgiver himself eventually receives thecall: "submit to the law you yourself proposed." (GM III 27)

This is not a way to disengage and secure one's identity against events thatthreaten to shake it but an experience of the self's contingency triggered overand over again through self-legislation.25 In contrast to the Kantian version,Nietzschean autonomy is not an experience of the self's sovereignty over the fluxof the world. Rather, Nietzschean autonomy is the flux of the world transposedinto the core of the self. Acting under the law of life, the will wills its non-identityto itself; it wills its transformation, disintegration, and reconstitution in ever

changing forms. The law of life grounds practice but it also takes it away: 'An

abysmally deep ground behind every ground, under every attempt to furnish

'grounds'" (JGB 289). Law of life names the need for a new mode of lawgivingbased on autonomy. Or, as Nietzsche states in Daybreak: "I submit only to the lawwhich I myself have given" (M 187).

Nietzschean autonomy annihilates all grounds for conduct that are constitutedon the basis of life-denying ideals. The lawgiver is placed in a realm free fromviolence to self and other that stems from reactivity, the search for permanence,and the will to comfort. This opens the possibility of a future beyond the horizonof ressentiment. In order to lay down the law of life, one must be autonomous;that is, free and distant from one's identity.

Law of life is the key component to Nietzschean autonomy and consists of self-

legislation, freedom, and willing the disintegration of the will. Although it sharesthe principle of universalizability with Kant's categorical imperative, it goes beyondKant because agency conceived as sovereign subjectivity is dethroned by law oflife. Nietzschean autonomy instills distance to oneself which perpetually displacesthe subject conceived as master. Pathos of distance reinforces the loss of sovereignsubjectivity and replaces it with a receptive, open, and non-reactive subject.

Nietzsche and Kant

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

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





516 NIETZSCHE/KANT

and reflections on law add up to something similar to Kant's reflections on law,

autonomy, and will. As Nancy notes, "To ntroduce Kant nto Nietzsche is provocativeor paradoxical only at a very superficial level."26The writings of Kant shiftedphilosophical activity away from theoretical reason and toward practical reason. Thequestion of freedom became the philosophical problem par excellence. Nietzscheclearly recognized both the importance of Kant's contribution to moral philosophyin his turn to practical problems and pursued his own project by working both withand against his Prussian forerunner. Actively giving oneself a law is the highestprinciple of morality and grounds the dignity of human beings for both Kant andNietzsche. Given Nietzsche's Kantian framework for ethics, it is not surprising he

claims Kant's work led to "an infinitely deeper and more serious view of ethicalquestions" (GT 19). In an 1872 piece called "The Philosopher'," ietzsche views Kant'scategorical imperative as a "virtueS' ne of those "impossible demands" throughwhich mankind "propagates itself.'27 Even if Kant's purification of will from theinfluence of anything sensible goes further than in Nietzsche's work, both thinkersfree the will from modes of contamination that render autonomy impossible.28

This is where my interpretation differs from Bernstein's in 'Autonomy andSolitude." Although he detects similarities between Kant's and Nietzsche'sreflections on autonomy, he opposes the project of autonomy itself. This leads

him to miss the complexity and richness of the Nietzschean version. For Bernstein,"Nietzsche's radicalization of Kantian autonomy terminates in the worldless, death-in-life solitude of the philosopher-legislator.'29 He adds: "Nietzsche's formalism,like Kant's, demonstrates the emptiness of the moral will.'30 By collapsing bothpositions, Bernstein obscures differences that complicate the threats he detects.Bernstein overstates the extent to which Nietzsche's view of autonomy isolates thewill. Nietzsche's presentation of the dangers of distance adds a crucial dimensionto his thinking on autonomy and saves it from the formalism and alienationBernstein sees in Kant. Pathos of distance is not a feeling of alienation that

"enforces solitude, mask, and irony."31 Rather, it is a heightened receptivity thataccompanies one's connectedness to the world and results in a greater attunementto the realm of sensibility but without being pathologically determined by it.

Contra Bernstein, Nietzschean autonomy is not about solitude but rather a callto transform oneself and for non-reactive engagement with others.32 It is easy, but

26. Nancy "Our Probity!" 80.27. Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth, "The Philosopher," 136.28. See William E. Connolly Why IAm Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1999), 164-66 for a discussion of the sacrifice of sensibility in Kant.

29. Bernstein, '"Autonomy nd Solitude," 213-14.30. Bernstein, 'Autonomy and Solitude,' 214.31. Berstein, '"Autonomy f Solitude:' 213.32. For accounts of Nietzsche that emphasize the individualistic dimensions of his thought, see

Alexander Nehemas, Nietzsche, Life as Literature Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) and






ultimately incorrect, to read Nietzsche as a radical individualist, as someone who

advocates a philosophy of solitude. Nietzsche criticizes modes of inter-subjectivitypredicated on conformity and the denial of individuality. He does not rejectcommunity tout court. Nietzsche is the first to admit that distance threatens the

possibility of community. And yet, distance is also the negative condition of its

possibility. A community without distance between members is a cult; one withtoo much distance disintegrates. A Nietzschean community could exist, then, asthe tension between imperatives to congregate and separate but without ever

resting on either side. It would preserve a space for individuality and autonomousaction but without forsaking engagement with others, even one's enemies.33

Taken together, autonomy and pathos of distance yield a more complicated andappealing Nietzsche than the one posited by Bernstein.

Connolly widens the distance between Kant and Nietzsche. He praisesNietzsche because he has left the Kantian imperative tradition behind andadvocates arts of the self.34This claim is at odds with my reading of Nietzsche that

emphasizes his debt to the imperative tradition in law of life. Connolly, moreover,has a difficult time affirming Kant. He reads him as proffering a mode of justiceconceived as a code involving discipline. He finds Kant's morality too certain,grounded, and fundamental. It does not easily harmonize with his postmodern

version of liberalism that calls for an ever-increasing emergence of new identities.The opposition Connolly makes between arts of the self and justice conceived ascode (Nietzsche contra Kant) may unnecessarily drive a wedge between them.This could have the counter-productive effect of reinforcing the liberal rejectionof Nietzsche which simultaneously lets liberals have their way with Kant. In

my view, Connolly pays insufficient attention to the dimensions of Nietzsche's

thought that would challenge the basis for the opposition between aesthetics ofthe self and transcendental commands.35

For Nietzsche, an ethic grounded on aesthetics is an insufficient basis for

moral conduct because it is incompatible with autonomous practice. Sincepathos of distance is not enough, Nietzsche turns to law. Nietzsche's new image oflaw is positioned between the empirical and the transcendental realms. Thiscould be viewed as a de-radicalization of Kant insofar as it blurs the boundary

Leslie Paul Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).33. Romand Coles emphasizes the Nietzschean themes of interaction and relations with others in

Rethinking Generosity: Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).34. See Connolly's The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), Why

I Am Not a Secularist, and "Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault," PoliticalTheory 21 (August 1993).

35. Connolly may have moved beyond the opposition he has created between Kant ("moral codes")and Nietzsche ("arts of the self"). For him, moral codes and arts of the self operate in a relation of"dissonant interdependence"; The Ethos of Pluralization, 187.





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between the empirical and transcendental realms, thereby taking the teeth out of

Kant's moral imperatives. I see it as a radicalization of Kant because it pushesNietzsche past "will to power" and toward a more appealing ethical position thatrejects sovereign subjectivity

Conclusion

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

nietzsche's radicalization of kant

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