Author Note
Anupam Debashis Roy,Freshman Student,Department of Political Science,Howard University
contact: writeranupam1101@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper will discuss the philosophical works of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on education. Although the author did not use education as a primary focus of his philosophical work, this paper will use his most influential philosophical works and extract a philosophy of education out of that. This paper will also provide a structure for a school of philosophy that will teach adolescent student who have passed high school and are prepared to go to college, a Nietzschean lesson to be a prepared for their future life as an young adult. This paper will argue that the effect of Nietzsche in forming the modern world has made an education in Nietzschean values indispensable. This school could be a summer school for volunteer students who will be taught in Nietzschean values so that they can be more determined about their life and more self expressive when they start their higher education.
The eventual construction for the educational philosophy will be explained throughout this paper. This will be done in three sections through ten reading critiques of works of Nietzsche and other authors who analyzed the works of Nietzsche. The first section will introduce the reader to Friedrich Nietzsche and his basic ideas. These reading critiques will also discuss about the importance of considering Nietzsche’s work in constructing a working educational philosophy for the current generation. This section will discuss the positive and negatives of the educational philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche under two reading critiques titled Nietzsche as a benefactor and Nietzsche as a malefactor.
The second section will discuss Nietzsche’s writings and other authors critique of Nietzsche’s writing on the topic of education. This section will also endeavor in building up a working prescription of education for the twenty first century in the light of the works of Nietzsche. This section will accept and deny several prescriptions Nietzsche proposed for the future of the educational institution and construct an ideal educational institution in the light of that discussion.
The third section will work on a theoretical model of Nietzschean school of self determinism. The project is to create a school for adolescents where they can learn about self expression and self creation by following Nietzschean standard of negation of pre held notions and idols and creating a better version of oneself as an idol. This school will teach students who have completed high school and are entering into college about creating a world for themselves where they can be free from a morality that has been passed on to them and not created by them. They will be taught not to follow and not to lead. They will be taught the values of the overman so that they can create an overman of themselves. For structuring this school, several books that base off of the educational philosophy of nietzsche will be used as guidelines.
1.The Philosopher with a Hammer:
Getting to Know Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most controversial philosophers of all time. That is to say that he did one of the greatest jobs as a philosopher. He completely changed the approach towards philosophy. The main goal of his philosophy is challenging the predetermined notions of the society and educating people to create standards for themselves. He used philosophy as an analyzing and creative tool to destroy and rebuild philosophy of his age. Therefore, one characteristic of his work is that, it amuses and irritates the reader at the same time. (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. ix)
Nietzsche uses philosophy for two main purposes. The first is as a medicine for the culture (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 2). He views people as the product of culture and culture as a product of people and expects his philosophy to reform and redirect culture in an optimal way (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 3). He himself acknowledges that his work may be way ahead of his time and he expects that his philosophy will remedy culture from its sickness for times to come. Sickness however, is not a problem according to him. He views sickness as a necessary tool for human beings to be transitioned from nature to culture.
His approach to the medicinal value of philosophy relates back to his contemporary Freud and Marx. All of them assessed phenomena not by their appearance but by their inner meanings. Nietzsche looks for a reality that causes the apparent reality, or the real reality (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 6). However, he time and again dispels the notion that there could be more than one reality and what we experience is not real. He strongly asserts that there is only one world and only one reality: the one we currently live in (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 6). He only tries to assess apparent reality by means of unifying underlying causes.
The second purpose that the philosophy of Nietzsche serves is that of a hammer. He uses his philosophy as a hammer to serve three different means. The first mean is to test the ‘idols’ of the society, namely pre held notions of ethics, ideals, values and truths. He uses his philosophy as a tuning fork to test these ideas. (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 15).
The second purpose of the hammer as described above is to destroy obscure ideas and remove them from the society. Nietzsche held his philosophy as a form of war against the norms (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 16). Nietzsche endeavors to destroy all ideals and morals that people held during his time and our time by challenging them with his philosophy. That is why reading Nietzsche is both intriguing and annoying. (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 18).
The final function of the hammer is to be used as a tool for creating new forms of ideals. He speaks of a reevaluation of values where people would rethink their ideas and establish new ones for the ones that are destroyed by means of discourse. He tries to create a new standard of morality and ideals that exceeds human and reaches something beyond which he names the overman (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 19).But he does not force his form of overman to all of the people. He encourages men to create their own form of overman and live upto the standards that are created solely by them and by no other.
Nietzsche is not only a philosopher and a thinker, he is also a physician for the culture and a mass educator. The core ideal of his work is to teach men to philosophize and find their own way to their own form of ubermensch (Tongeren & P, 1999, p. 19).
2. Misinterpretations of Nietzsche:
Friedrich Nietzsche was suspicious of everything there was to be suspicious about. In this paranoia he did humanity a great service by providing them it a new belief system: disbelief. He is suspicious of everything he mentions in his book: ‘Beyond Good and Evil.’ He regards morality, religion and philosophy as the cause of the disastrous path that the human race has been heading into and when you pay attention to his arguments. (Nietzsche, Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, 2002, p. vii)
He challenges everything there is to challenge. He does not stop at challenging and doing a little tickle with wordplay, he is there to provide an alternative to the current belief system and his alternative is not to believe anything but something original and unique. His central teaching is not to learn anything that he teaches. That is paradoxical because accepting this ideology would defeat the purpose of the ideology itself since the ideology would be acquired and not synthesized by oneself. This would force a reader to try to come up with an original philosophy because all other moral structures would be destroyed by Nietzsche and if anything is left, Nietzsche would equip the reader to debase it himself.
He comes down from his solitude of wisdom to teach humanity not to learn. That is liberation in its purest form. Nietzsche says the only way that a human can be truly liberated is if they can be freed from the constraints of oppressive tradition that manufactures the ideas of a person and hinders their liberation as free thinking beings. (Nietzsche, Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, 2002, p. vii)
The apparent failure of Nietzsche, however, at least at his own lifetime, was to connect to his readers. He failed to connect to the regular readers and transpire his knowledge to them. He blames this on his readers and says that he was too ahead of his time and he did not expect his readers to be the monster that he made himself into.As Horstmann and Norman suggests, he approached the wrong topic in a wrong way and I would add, at the wrong time (Nietzsche, Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, 2002, p.xi). He preached individualism and uniqueness at the time when German nationalism was at it’s peak. The overreach of the state to homogenize the people against its interest of nationalism worked against the ideas of Nietzsche. That is why Nietzsche himself names one of his books Untimely Meditations because he himself knew that he was ahead of his time.
His way of life provided no promise of happiness and liberation. His idea of liberation was that of eternal confusion and agony. An ideal wise person who follows Nietzsche’s ideals would be a highly neurotic person who would have to try hard to avoid thinking of himself as a complete failure (Nietzsche, Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, 2002, p. xii). He provides the reader with the choice of wisdom and agony or ignorance and happiness, albeit false. Therefore, a rational person would invariably choose the latter. His avoidance of discourse and unwillingness to connect to the reader is disturbing according to some (Nietzsche, Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, 2002, p. xiii). However, this is a misinterpretation because the failure of the readers to connect with the ideas of Nietzsche was not the fault of the author or the reader, it was the fault of the time. The time coerced the judgement of people under the name of patriotism and nationalism and they were unable to understand Nietzsche’s enlightened ideas that would define the modern worldview.
The interpretation of Nietzsche in the reading is an absolute misinterpretation. Unfortunately, this sort of misinterpretation to subject Nietzschean philosophy to as a supporting morale for Eugenics or Nazism is not uncommon. Therefore, proper Nietzschean interpretaion must be taught to the students so that the students can be prepared for a Nietzschean modern world.Nietzsche is not an end in himself. He is the beginning to something new. It is the duty of us, educators, to guard Nietzschean philosophy as a rationale for destructive philosophies like Eugenics or Totalitarianism and use this philosophy as it was meant to be used, to promote creativity and culture. As Nietzsche said himself, Nietzsche is a dynamite. It is our responsibility to use this dynamite from the kind misinterpretations exemplified by the subject of this reading critique in order to create railroads and not to blow civilization up into bits which this kind of misinterpretation would certainly do.
3. The kind of Philosopher We Need the Most:
Nietzsche as a benefactor.
The importance of Friedrich Nietzsche as a philosopher that intrigues us to rethink education system is that he is the philosopher that blatantly laid out the truth- ‘God is dead.’ This is important because this assertion had been an elephant in the room of philosophy for a long time. While many philosophers actively argued against the existence of god and also disproved god, they did not attack the fall of divinity as a social institution. What Nietzsche said was not a normative statement about the existence of a philosophical god but a positive statement about the ineffectivity of religion as a social structure. Nietzsche's success was in detecting the nihilism that the hippocratic religiousness was throwing European populace into. Nietzsche signals a crisis of morals and provides a new metaphysical foundation for morals (Ansell-Pearson, 1994,p.102).
The death of God did not only legitimize the existence of a metaphysical moral authority, but it also made it impossible for any lawgiver to claim divinity or even immutability. Any lawgiver must therefore be a parodist. Therefore Zarathustra, the modern lawgiving character of Nietzsche, is a self parodist. He contradicts himself and renounces authority even when he is offered (Ansell-Pearson, 1994,p. 103). This is to prove that in the age of nihilism, the only moral dictator for a person could be the person himself. Any dictation from authority will fall as the dictation from divine sources have fallen in the past.
And thus Nietzsche teaches the superman, a man that is over and beyond the current man and passes down directions for the current man. The superman will not be a deity for the society, but it will only be a personal destiny for a person. The enlightened will not be a shepherd of a class of blind followers but coexist among fellow creators. There is no good or evil, no rich and poor, no ruler and ruled (Ansell-Pearson, 1994,p. 106) There has been much discourse among linguists regarding the meaning of Ubermensch. Is it a superman that has superhuman ability or a person who has surpassed nihilism to create an ideal version of one’s own? Nietzsche himself warns that it would be a blunder to define the ubermensch along darwinian lines.
Nietzschean superhumanity, is not some super power beyond the reach of mere mortals. It is the existence of a will to change towards a nobler state. This nobility will not be determined by a preexisting morality guided by the fallen idols, but will be created by the person who seeks nobility. Superhumanity, therefore requires the negation of all existing value system and endeavor to create a system of his own. The desire for change requires the old perishing and new striving in a man. That is the superpower of Nietzsche's Superman (Ansell-Pearson, 1994,p.107). It is not a question of becoming something beyond humanity but realizing one’s own unique humanity.
The importance of Nietzsche in a modern nihilistic life is therefore self explanatory. As with the death of god and religion as social institutions are withering away, so is the sense of sacrificing oneself for the values of the whole. Therefore, a herd morality can no longer be legitimized, the modern morality must be personal. The only hope for society now is to reorganize on the basic rights of people to create morality of their own and organize spontaneously on the basis of congruous moralities. No more rules and doctrines can be imposed a man in the name of divinity or the good of the whole. The society must therefore break it’s old rules and create new ones that incubates an environment of individual creation. Therefore, the education system must also follow suite.
The education system of the new world cannot be something that teaches young learners about some supermen that are defined by the society through pre held notions which have already been refuted. It must be in favor of creating new definitions of superhumanity. The modern teacher can be nothing but a self parodist. Constantly contradicting himself and the ideals set by the society. He must be able to convey knowledge without setting up a ideal knowledge. He must not create an ideal for his students but help them construct their own ideals. He must teach them by example (Ansell-Pearson, 1994,p. 103). When he will describe the deeds of others, he must be impartial and careful not to leave any grandiose imprint on the student’s mind that they could develop into an idol. An ideal teacher must not become an ideal for the student himself because that would only create a false idol. A teacher must treat a student as an equal creative entity that has the same chance at creating their own definition of superhumanity as themselves. Their only role in the classroom must be to facilitate this inevitable creation. The only idol that the teacher can let the student create is that which the student can create of a future version himself because he can change that at his will. An enhancement of creativity in the education system thus might be achieved following the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.
4. The School of Superman:
Learning to say NO.
The first lesson that my father passed down to me was that we should never say no in the beginning. We must say yes, no matter what and say no only when it is absolutely necessary. The lesson stays similar through the different continents of the world. Saying no has always been viewed as a negative thing to do. But saying no is more important than we understand because negation holds the key for construction of an original morality for a person. As Nietzsche himself says in his Ecce Homo: in order to affirm, one must learn to negate. (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p. 127).
The proposed nietzschean school, the structure of which I will reveal throughout my reading critiques in this research paper, will serve the purpose of setting a person free and help them lead a happy life for themselves and contribute for the wellbeing of the society. The importance of individuality is very important lesson for any adolescent student in the school of Superman. Because a Superman must be free and the path to freedom comes through the path of individuality. A Superman, at first must learn to become a man and the foundation of human evolution lies in the production in the individuality (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p.128). Therefore, no being that does not value individuality can be human. If a being does not value individuality they would still be bound to the primitive notions of judging their actions according to the morality of the group. A superman must realize that if rightness and wrongness is judged on the basis of the authority of the tradition, the subjects of the tradition don’t only stay under the umbrella of the tradition, they become enslaved to it.
A Superman must realize that the morality of the society is nothing but the morality of the strong that they have dubbed as ‘good’ and bad does not come before this good but comes after it to make as an adjective for everything that is opposed to the good set out by the strong in the society . Therefore this morality is parasitic, it lives off of the negation of all other moralities, as typified by christianity that negates all other moralities (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p.130). This strategy defeats itself because in time this morality proves contradictory as does all sort of social morality since the people in the society can never be homogenous and can never adopt a certain type of morality that fits all of the members. Therefore, the members fail to adhere to this defeated and contradictory morality. Some of the members rebel out the morality and create an alternate morality which the current society neutralizes. Being terrorized by this sight, the rest of this society put on a facade showing that they do believe in the societal morality whereas they grow more and more nihilistic as time passes. They do not have any aspiration and they do not have a reason for being alive.
The Superman will not fit into either categories. He will not set up any new alternate societies that challenges the current social structure because he must realize that the current social structure is nothing to be defeated but that it is self defeating or self overcoming (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p.143). What the superman should do instead, is create an individual morality for himself and encourage others around him to create personal morality structure for themselves and themselves only.
However, the Superman must be very careful that they do not become new prophets of their morality but encourage people to create morality of themselves. Nietzsche himself is very weary about setting himself as a new authority (Ansell-Pearson, 1994, p.145). This must always be maintained by the Superman too, that he does not become a new authority that sets up the morality of a new herd to counter the previous herd. The Superman must learn and teach the value of individual creation that leads to individual morality to be able to free from coercion any herd moralities. That is the only way the school of Superman may be successful to set up a society of Supermans.
5.The School of Superman:
A Guideline for the Educator of a Superman.
The educators in the school of superman must have special qualities because they will be disctinctly different from the conventional educators of the society. To be more precise, they will be the exact opposite of the conventional teachers because their task will be to undo the deeds of conventional educators. Because conventional educators only teach the student to follow the role that society has assigned for them. They are the bad philosophers who stand in the way of production of the natural great philosopher that every person is (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.184). The first task of an educator in the school will be to anti-educate the students, the framework of which has already been laid in the previous reading critique.
The conventional educators teach students to be conventional men who evade their genius and cloak themselves in the conventionality from the fear of repulsion of their neighbour. (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p. 127). This newborn creature is human no more and has no hope of becoming something over human because it becomes a repulsive and desolate being that hates its own existence judging itself through the customs of the society that he lives in (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.128). But a true educator must be able to make her pupil realize that existence is meaningful because among a huge pool of time and place to exist in, that specific being came to existence in a specific time and place and that must mean something for them. Therefore a primary task of a human must be to realize, if not demonstrate, the rationale of her existence through the realize the uniqueness of their being (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.128).
Such an educator must educate not for the sake of the audience, but for the sake of themselves. They must find their own liberation in liberating their students. They must not deceive anyone, especially themselves, while teaching. Not even the amicable social deception that is a given in a simple daily conversation can be an option because an educator must be aware that a sincere pupil will be following every word of her educator and a slightest contradiction or deception will automatically drive the student away from the lesson that the educator stands to teach. Therefore, the only way to speak for the audience in a class, can be to not speak for them but only to speak for oneself where one has no wish to imprint his own principles on themselves, but just express their own opinion. If that seems to be so difficult for an educator, they must imagine a child in each student, to whom she talking to as their father. The lecture must be a good natured discourse before an auditor who listens to it with love (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.134).
The educator must teach the student to deny all that can be denied for that will leave space for all that is undeniable to herself. That what is left is a true and honest account of what the person believes in, of what the person can claim metaphysical meaning on, explicable through the meanings of another and higher life, and in the profoundest sense: affirmative. In doing this, the educator might lead the student into the paths of excruciating pain and suffering but liberation can come only through suffering. This suffering is the only way to live a life that is the only possible noble life: that is a heroic one since a happy life is an impossible one (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.153).
The task of the educator is to cultivate all that is true and non contradictory to a man. The educator is to give birth to the philosopher, the artist, the musician, the poet, the saint in a man that searches for their individuality and does not hate it. They have to be taught to hate something else, something more universal and cease to hate themselves (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.161). They should hate everything that stands in their way of realizing themselves and others who stand around them. Because cultivating individuality is not a non social activity, but a communal exercise. This community will not be held together by some external forms of regulation but by a fundamental idea. It is the idea of the culture, a culture that sets the task of cultivating philosophers, artists and saints in all the members of the society through all the members of the society (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p.160). And this task must be continued through all the students of a certain class in the school of superman. An ideal educator would be able to teach all of the students in the class to become educators themselves and cultivate the individuality not only in themselves but also in the people around them.
The process of cultivating realizing one’s individuality has to be simple and easy to understand. One has to place all the things that they value in front of them and truly think about them. They have to think about everything they have valued over the years of their lives. They would then have to think about the philosophical concepts of these values to the definition that it holds to them. Lay these values in front, negate everything that can be negated and what is left will give the individual their own individual law, a fundamental law of their own true self. An educator must facilitate this process and help the student realize their true potential. The educator must be able to make the student realize that what is true inside of a student is something that is ineducable and something that is true to himself and maybe only to himself. The educator must be able to inspire the student through the painstaking process of formulating an individuality and make them realize their own true self lies high above them and not concealed in deep within them (Breazeale & Hollingdale, 1997, p. 129). A true educator in the school of superman must therefore be a true liberator that helps the student realize their own superhumanity and release them from the cage of mediocrity that society tries to form around them.
6.The School of Superman:
What to learn
What a person needs to learn from the School of Superman is what he wants to learn. What he wants to learn might not be an easy search for him but it is a search that he must undertake. He must try to realize what he wants to know about the world and about himself. This may be difficult since the society and the culture may have covered up his own judgements calls and questions regarding values under a pile of unsatisfying non answer. But the first path to freedom can only be the realization of one’s slavery.
One must ask a ‘why’ of life for that is the first question any living being asks. After years of miseducation they are burdened under a number of imposed answer but they must learn to uncover this question once again when they enter the school of superman. For the answer to the why is the first and most important question that a person has to know the answer to. Because once a man knows the why, they can put up with any how (Nietzsche & Kaufmann, 1976, p.468).
Then one must ask the first question of conscience: where does one aspire to run. It is a social consensus that everyone should aspire to run ahead but what role do they want to play when they run ahead. Do they want to run as a shepherd or exception. Or should they take the third role of fugitive.(Nietzsche & Kaufmann, 1976, p.472). This question is important to know the answer to because the answer would determine the place of a man in his society. The first question of conscience lays ground to the aspiration that a social man has of overcoming his current status quo through social means. The social man must learn if they are capable of becoming a shepherd and sacrifice themselves for the good of their herd. They must know if they are able to make the sacrifices of ending their lives as an exception. They must know if they are up for the challenge of the two noble ways to run ahead, because the failure to attain either of the goals will throw them into the darkness of the third: the fate of a fugitive, scorned by society that they have pledged themselves to.
The second question asks if a person is original or not. It asks if a person is original or just an actor, or even the copy of an actor. It asks if one is a representative of the culture or a part of the culture that is represented (Nietzsche & Kaufmann, 1976, p. 472). This question is important for a person to realize their place in their society. If they lie in the ranks of the noble who determine the ways of the culture or if they are only menial tools of the societies leader to play with. Answer to this question will make a student realize if they have been able to realize their full potential to become original and genuine thinking being or if they have given in to mediocrity. If a person realizes, through answering this question, the failure of himself to attain his true potential, it might act as an incentive to help him rise up of his condition and strive for a better individuality that he might be able to fulfil himself through.
The third question of conscience directs a man towards his feelings towards his responsibilities to others against them. If he is someone who looks on, or lends a hand or just walks off the events that happen around him (Nietzsche & Kaufmann, 1976, p. 472). The answer to this question would make a man realize the strength of his affinity towards the people around him. If the events occurring around him affect him to a point where he feels a requirement of being involved or not would give him a direction of attaining a personal philosophy. And it would let him know a lot about himself if he would only be involved as an actor to follow the responsibilities given to him by his society. This question lies as a litmus test of individuality to a person.
The last question provides the basis of the individual philosophy of a person. It questions person again if he wants to walk along or walk ahead or walk by himself. Nietzsche says that it is important to know what one wants and that one wants ((Nietzsche & Kaufmann, 1976, p.472). This is a revisit to the first question but this provides options of settling down and walking along with the crowd. This questions after investigating the first three moral questions, if the person is any more able to settle down and follow the herd or if he wants to rise over to his individuality. This also provides the warning to a person that they might have to walk alone i they choose to walk on their individual path and asks a person if they are ready for the painstaking walk.
If a student in the school of superman asks this question to himself, he will be on the way of discovering something truly original about himself through at least negating some answers that society has provided for these questions and set out to search for his own individual answer to these questions.
7. The alternative educational institution
Nietzsche disdained conventional education provided by the state that wastes too much resources on non creative usage. His work has been interpreted as disdaining conventional education provided by the means of the educational institutions i.e. universities because it focuses too much on the state, science or other money making or sociable activities that he views as pure waste of time (Fitzsimons, 2007.20). Although it may be argued that many of the philosophers including him were product of this educational system and therefore that educational system might actually be conducive to the creation of geniuses. However, only a person who goes through a process can describe it most deftly and that is what Nietzsche does. His assertion is also practical in a sense that he predicted that western scholarship would soon abandon philosophy and update science into almost a divine position which happened in reality after the works of David Hume. The scholarship abandoned philosophical creativity and became technocentric while destroying the nature in the process. But this very nature should have been the primary concern of the scholarship. It should have protected and augmented the nature with philosophical and artistic endeavors. What is valuable to Nietzsche is nature, and a culture that perfects the production of philosophers, artists and saints, ones who would reinterpret nature from their own perspective and give nature its own metaphysical meaning (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.20).
He believed that conventional education did not only fail to produce great men that would reinterpret culture but actively stood in the way (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.21). Their individuality was coerced by the state to fit into an interpretation that is viable for the usage of the state. This is practical because now more than ever do we see a push from the conventional education machine to create more people centered on technicism, state centrism or other money making ideologies. It fits my experience because I have been repeatedly advised to choose a more practical career path, which in other words means, a more state employable career path and abandon my choice of becoming a philosopher, who would reevaluate all values and create a metaphysical personal evaluation of culture, which according to Nietzsche would be the only thing that education is supposed to do.
Such education that creates state employees, has more to do with the currency value of human which provides necessary tools to the state to advance through converting creative men into herds of followers who believe in cultivating as much profit as possible and reaping as much happiness out of the profit as possible (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.21). However, Nietzsche does not say that this realistic exercise to fulfil the requirements of the state must be abandoned but he realizes a very practical argument of keeping such a system because that would prepare men for struggle of existence (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.21). Therefore, the philosopher keeps his thought grounded in reality. Nietzsche does not propose his solutions for an ideal world where no constraints of reality exists, but provides a very real and practical critique of the educational system. He then provides a practical solution of creating a new sort of educational institution, one that would focus on culture (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.21). That is exactly what School of Superman-aspires to become.
The object of the alternate educational institution would be very similar to that of the Greek State where germ of culture could develop and the state could accompany as a muscular friend to protect it from disagreeable reality (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.22). This can be paralleled with the conditions of a mother's womb where the child would develop freely and fearlessly and realize it’s personal traits as a human being. In a human mother’s womb a person finds his bodily distinction and in the womb of education, she shall find the distinction of her mind. He also parallels this with the German Burschenschaft which was a student organization to cultivate truth, honor and freedom in a patriotic tradition (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.24). Therefore we can derive from there that Nietzsche most probably favored voluntary organization of people uniting under the principle of liberation from conventionality and creativity to promote and create new knowledge that would create a culture would augment nature.
Nietzsche specifically admires the Greek philosophers who were not paid by the state and therefore were free from the coercion of the state. He regrets that his contemporary world, philosophy was being destroyed under state control and therefore he advocates a separation from the State and the academy (Fitzsimons, 2007, p.26). However, Nietzsche fails to provide a specific structure of this institution and blocking state as the financing factor he makes it almost economically impossible to sustain such an institution in a large scale. But for the purposes of Nietzschean education, the institution can be limited since he does not believe that a large number of people can or even should be educated to become superman. Therefore, volunteers who are interested in such an educational enterprise may be willing to donate themselves and make the institution survive. This provides justification to the decision that the School of Superman must be a voluntary course funded by donations from volunteers if absolutely needed and will not become a profit earning academy itself but stand as a distinct alternative institution for the production of genius men and ripening their work. In this institution, philosophy would act as a cultural judge, without the influence of any authority, or even salary.
8. Speaking, Writing and Discourse
In the lecture titled ‘On the future of our educational institutions’, Friedrich Nietzsche discusses the failure of the public education system of contemporary educational institutions and tries to provide a framework for an alternative educational institution, that would be different from the current public institutions.
However, the excerpts from specific portions of the series of lectures will be used as frameworks in creating a complete picture of what Nietzsche would view as a perfect school for the fostering of a genius, an intellectual person who would flourish and compose his original view of culture and nature.
The author calls the current education system a failure because the current educational institutions rely on the political economy of growth through consumption. The only value of the materialist world is to maximize production for which a machine of consumers and wage earners must be fashioned and their philosophy must also be fashioned accordingly. Therefore, the status quo has chosen the education system as a vehicle to impart this philosophy on the future generation. Maximization of happiness has been defined as maximization of supply and demand (Nietzsche, 1974, p.36). A nation therefore wants to maximize the number of such men that would fit as parts of the consumption machine and thereby maximize the happiness of the nation under the evaluation of production (Nietzsche, 1974, p.37).
The author also denounces the hypertrophy of reason in the educational system, in which too much energy is spent in specialized narrow areas of science that is so detached from cultural and social life that life loses its human meaning and concentrates a person to a specific specialized, narrowing their possibilities of multidisciplinary innovation. The author draws parallel between the modern natural scientist and a modern industrial worker, both having been much too concentrated with nominal chances of creativity or self exploration (Nietzsche, 1974, p.39). However, this is too simplistic and too critical of natural sciences since an extremely talented scientist may be able to express their individuality through their work in natural sciences. It is not unprecedented when a natural scientist has used his scientific theory to develop a metaphysical dimension to his worldview. He also counters himself when he says that this kind of technical training centers are important for sustaining civilization through survival is necessary (Nietzsche, 1974, p. 95). By providing that argument, he ends up supporting a system that would invariably drive students towards a specialized education in the natural sciences.
Nietzsche highly values the education of language. He posits the education of language as an education of mental faculties as opposed to the education of the material faculties such as scientific and mathematical studies (Nietzsche, 1974, p.49). He is despaired by the fact that people view language as languid, and don’t feel that they have a responsibility to contribute. Nietzsche views language as the vehicle of composition and composition as a vehicle of originality. He disapproves of formal education, that which is provided by the public schools, since it denounces creativity and compromises for an average level of composition which defeats the purpose of composition because it lacks originality (Nietzsche, 1974, p.53). Nietzsche believes that the basis of education should be equipping students with adequate speaking and writing skills so that they can convey their originality. He says that he does not believe that any institution is a true representative of a culture that patronizes the production of the self determining genius, if that does not take the task of teaching speaking and writing as their holy duty (p.55).
However, Nietzsche contradicts himself on the natural hierarchy of intellect. This theory describes that only a very limited amount of people can really ever become self determining educated individuals and therefore, mass education is a mistake. It also dictates, that since only a small amount of educators are available for educating and liberating the intellectual elites, these scarce resources must not be squandered on popular education (Nietzsche, 1974, p.76). This is contradictory because he does not provide in any framework of defining or locating this intellectual elites who can be trained to become educated individuals. Since he provides no measuring test for spotting the intellectual elite, everybody should be given the opportunity of education so that the possibility of voluntary formation of an intellectual elite may be possible. And through massively open online courses, sharing knowledge from proper educators to an infinite number of people and therefore refuting the argument that mass education is counterproductive.
True education, according to Nietzsche, lies in the original interpretations of nature. He says that the student must be taken to close proximity of nature, so that he can originate his own interpretation of every natural phenomena. In this way they would be able to feel the unity in all existence and find metaphysical meaning of their being that is original and not installed to fulfill the roles of the society (p.96). Nietzsche proposes an alternative school that would run in parallel and in tandem with the conventional education system that would provide extraordinary individuals with an opportunity of viewing themselves from different perspective and therefore finding their originality and interpretation of reality (Nietzsche, 1974, p.97). This process fits my experience since I have worked in student organization and voluntary study groups and class that could develop a similar pedagogy through which this philosophy might also be practical.
Therefore, an alternate educational institution based on voluntary subscription should be erected that would expose high school graduates with methods of criticism and evaluation of different standpoints and perspectives. This education would endeavor to make a student independent enough for the extraordinary free position that he will find himself in a University . Therefore the purpose of teaching a student the mastery of language is an instrument to the independence of a student. It stands to enable him to criticise documents, and in the final stages help him to compose original work (Nietzsche, 1974, p.123).
Overall the article was not very good on language since the author did not or very vaguely defined what he meant by culture. A reader should have experience of reading Nietzsche’s previous work before reading this work. The consequences drawn are corresponding with the author’s perspective since Nietzsche eventually gave up his career as a University teacher and therefore showed his disdain for mass education. However, his theory is contradictory because his character Zarathustra does come down from the mountain to talk with people. If educating the mass were worthless, it would not make sense when he himself does it. Nietzsche kind of succeeded in getting the result of this theory by writing theories ahead of his time and therefore appealing to a selective group of intellectuals. The theory does not cover the widest possible range of experience but rather follows experiences of selected people who are the intellectual elite. The theory however, does not use a lot of symbols and therefore is easy to understand. The theory leads to new way of thinking language education as a vehicle of discourse and therefore originality.
This theory can be altered and made better for usage in the School of Superman. The alternate educational system must enable students to be able to understand varied viewpoints and analyze them critically. They must be prepared for their higher education where they would learn independently. This would be done through the mastery of speaking and writing as tools of discourse and criticism. This will be done while neglecting selectivity and massive volunteer inclusion will be encouraged through the internet.
9.Zarathustra’s education
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the capstone of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works. The book lays out the philosophy of Nietzsche through the words of his fictional character, Zarathustra. From the account of Zarathustra, we may be able to figure out Nietzsche’s philosophy of education as a whole.
When Zarathustra becomes thirty years old, he decides to come down from his solitude and teach man what he had learnt about life. He looks at the sun and says that its existence was because of the existence of the people that enjoy sunshine. Therefore, he decides to distribute his knowledge among the people of the earth so that they may be able to enjoy their existence (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.3). This proves that Nietzsche believes in education as an effective form of spreading knowledge. Nietzsche believes that if knowledge is not spread, it does not hold any value. Therefore, it would be a prerogative of a learned man to transmit what he has learned to those who do not know.
The purpose of this knowledge, according to Nietzsche, is to create something that is beyond human existence. He finds that every animal has created something more superior than itself and therefore humans should also be propelled to create something better than humans (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.5). This being that is better than humans is what Nietzsche calls overman or superman, the creative objective of human existence. This superman is not a more evolved man along Darwinian lines, but a better version of a person than they are now. Most people fail to realize their potential for growth and therefore fail to reach optimum creative existence. This is failure of existence according to Nietzsche. All humans personally should try to create something that is superior than their current self.
Then Zarathustra lays claim that all otherworldly hope is false and all those who preach of a world other than this world are false prophets. They mix poison in people’s mind and hinder them from realizing the fullest potential of their life in their current existence (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.6). God is dead-says Zarathustra by which he means that the metaphysical meaning of religion is lost and therefore humans are being propelled to nihilism. Therefore humans must not pretend that they believe in any metaphysical world that may consist of an afterlife. All energy must be spent on the current life and all that can be done must be done in order to get the fullest out of the life that they have currently. Those who do not properly appreciate the meaning of their existence are committing the highest form of blasphemy after the death of God (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.6).
Zarathustra directly addresses the subject of education as something that distinguishes man from a goatherd. The proper education at a Nietzschean school would focus on humans as a goal, mankind would be the highest hope. The Nietzschean school must therefore address the chaos in a person’s existence so that they can find their inspiration for creating a dancing star-which embodies the realization of their creative potential (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.9). Every person has a chaos inside them that is yet to be addressed. The purpose of the Nietzschean school is to find that chaos and introduce it to the student so that they can utilize it to create a dancing star for themselves.
The pedagogy of the school of superman will be taken from the idea provided in this book. The ideal human society is painted as one where there would be no shepherd and one herd (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p. 10). Such will be the classroom environment of the school of superman where the teacher will not be a dictator of activities and chores but a fellow researcher who would try to find out the creative chaos in her students and in the process test her philosophy against those of his students. The teacher will be ready to learn from the students as much as the students will be eager to learn from the teacher.
The task of the student will be to try and become something beyond a pupil. Zarathustra says that one repays the teacher badly if one remains only a pupil (Nietzsche, Caro, Pippin 2006, p.59). Therefore, the students, by the end of the course in the school of superman, must endeavor to become something of a teacher themselves. They would be prompted to lead discussions and present their researches. They would be prompted to take full fledged classes where they would follow their teacher’s pedagogy in searching the creative chaos in their colleagues.
10. Why we need Nietzsche now more than ever
The importance of an Nietzschean education is greater in the current age than ever before. This is because, in a Nietzschean vision,the task of philosophy is not to provide final answer to philosophy’s impossible questions, but to imagine preposterous answers to them (p.184). This is especially necessary in a world that is facing challenges greater than ever before. What is most necessary purpose of current education is not to teach students to conform to preheld knowledge and morality, but to create new moralities and knowledge since the previous value systems has brought us on the brink of extinction.
The extinction that I describe is can be outlined as three crises that confront the world: global climate change, weapons of mass destruction and the misery of billions in the Global South (p.186). The origin of these problems can be traced to an eurocentric colonization and then a neoliberal globalization that depends on a hypertrophy of reason and lack of philosophical consideration of policies in a nihilistic world. Development of weapons of mass destruction was only possible because of science unchecked by philosophy, global climate change and misery of billions in the global south is caused by an unchecked neoliberal globalization where the rich want to maximize their pleasure through maximizing consumption in a value system that lacks metaphysical meaning. Therefore, a new philosophy must be created to alter this way of human progress and towards a sustainable future that promotes growth and preservation.
However, the fault with Nietzsche as diagnosed above can be reiterated and be rejected in designing a modern philosophical curriculum. As Nietzsche lacked the experience of democracy, he viewed education as the right of only the elites. Having hundred years of experience of democracy after Nietzsche, we can disregard this elitism and propel towards an education that will be available to every student (p.187).
The death of philosophy or the engulfing of philosophy by science has happened through the hypertrophy of reason that Nietzsche warned about. The success of science in correctly predicting human experiences led philosophers followed suit and became specialists of science. Nietzsche however, philosophises against this tide and advocates a return to philosophy's primary responsibility which is to create new values as an expression of life’s force (p.191). This is important especially now because we desperately need to revalue our current values and create new values that may be able to ensure growth and preservation of the human race.
The wisdom of Nietzsche is that he was right to believe that philosophy could never be finished. New dangers call for new philosophies and every generation must revalue their values to fit the values for their time. Every generation must therefore await their great philosophers so that they can create values that ensure growth and preservation in their age . However, contrary to Nietzsche, education must be democratized to maximize the chances of finding an alternate value system that can sustain life because the more people try to find a solution, the greater the chance of actually finding a solution (p.193).
Overall the reading was not very good on language since the author did define all his terms. The consequences drawn are corresponding with the author’s perspective since the author actively supports the democratization of education and encourages research among his students. He does not contradict himself. The theory does not use a lot of symbols and therefore is easy to understand. It leads to new way of thinking language education as a vehicle of research and re-evaluation of values in order to create values that fit the contemporary age in creating a philosophy that promotes preservation and growth.
References
Tongeren, & P. (1999). Reinterpreting modern culture: An introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Nietzsche, F. W., Horstmann, R.-P, & Norman, J. (2002). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ansell-Pearson, K. (1994). An introduction to Nietzsche as political thinker: The perfect nihilist.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche,(1997). Untimely meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1976). The portable Nietzsche. Harmondsworth, Middlesex Penguin Books.
Fitzsimons, P. J. (2007). Nietzsche, ethics and education: An account of difference. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense.
Nietzsche, F. W. (1974). On the future of our educational institutions & Homer and classical philology. New York: Gordon Press.
Nietzsche, F. W., Caro, A. D., & Pippin, R. B. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for all and none. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press.
Verharen, C.C (2016). Beginning philosophy: from ancient egypt to our world. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Philosophy, Howard University, Washington D.C, USA.
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