Psychology as a First Principle? Self-Love and the Will to Power in La Rochefoucauld and Nietzsche

Abstract

ABSTRACTBoth Nietzsche and La Rochefoucauld rejected metaphysical principles, such as the Kantian moral imperatives, and adopted psychology as their first philosophy. In this article I explore their views of self-love and of the will to power as the first principles of human motivation. Although both thinkers reduce actions to egoistic motives, they define the human drives and passions differently. While Nietzsche criticizes La Rochefoucauld’s view of a self-love-oriented intention as the principal cause of deeds, his interpretation is reductionist seeing that La Rochefoucauld also gives a quasi-expressivist account of deeds based on multiple drives. Unlike La Rochefoucauld, Nietzsche claims that there is no preexisting intention before or behind deeds, but rather that the doer expresses herself in and through her deeds. He laments that La Rochefoucauld’s concept of self-love is overshadowed by Christianity and criticizes him for condemning secular virtues as postlapsarian vices in disguise. Egoism, for Nietzsche, is a drive that is ingrained in the psyche for self-elevation. By comparing and contrasting their views, I conclude that self-love for La Rochefoucauld is pure self-affirmation at the expense of other drives or other agents, while Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power is a master-drive’s organization of other drives in service of the grander project of the self, which at the same time allows the subordinate drives to express themselves and fulfill the functions proper to their own nature. This interpretation sheds light on the key concept of egoism and the will to power in Nietzsche’s moral psychology, as well as on the first principles of human action in Nietzsche and La Rochefoucauld.KEYWORDS: Self-lovethe will to powermoral psychologyintentionalismnon- intentionalismFriedrich NietzscheFrançois de La Rochefoucauld AcknowledgementsI would like to express my gratitude to the copy editor and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions. I also thank Pierre Force, Anthony Grafton, Melissa Lane and Alexander Nehamas for their insightful suggestions and long-term support for this project.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1. In the extensive secondary literature on the will to power in Nietzsche, I draw mainly on Anderson, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, who interprets it as the interaction of “power-centers” in which the aim of each power is its own expansion; Maudemarie Clark, in Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, claims that the will to power refers not to the phenomenon in real life, but to Nietzsche’s value system; another theory, which accords with my interpretation, sees the will to power as a psychological agent, especially Bernard Reginster, who in The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism,126, deems it to be a force that overcomes various resistances and thus combats nihilism. Some scholars, such as Günther Abel, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Gregory Moore, and Ken Gemes, consider the will to power as a biological or physical drive.2. Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke (hereafter KSA)1884,25[178]. Hereafter, quotations from the published sections of KSA are translated by Walter Kaufmann unless indicated otherwise, and the translations of quotations from the unpublished sections of KSA are my own.3. The expressivist critics I draw on include Acampora, “Nietzsche, Agency, and Responsibility,”141–57; Nehamas, “What an Author Is,” 685–91, and “Nietzsche, Intention, Action,” 685–701; Pippin, “Lightning and Flesh, Agent and Deed,” 131–45, and Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy.4. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, VI, 3.5. Ibid., The Genealogy of Morals, I, 13.6. Pippin, “Lightning and Flesh, Agent and Deed,” 132.7. Nehamas, “What an Author Is,” 685–91; and “Nietzsche, Intention, Action,” 685–701. See also Pippin, “Lightning and Flesh, Agent and Deed,” 131–45.8. Nietzsche, KSA 1887,9[67].9. See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 21: “The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated.” See Forster’s analysis in “Nietzsche on Free Will,” 374–96. See also Pippin, “Lightning and Flesh, Agent and Deed,” 133.10. Tornau, “Saint Augustine.”11. Augustine, De civitate dei 1.26; Sermon 30.3–4, in The Works of Saint Augustine.12. Augustine, Confessiones 10.7; In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 32.5, in The Works of Saint Augustine.13. La Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims, V: 69, 22–23. Hereafter all references to the Maxims are to this edition and are cited in the text.14. Lafond, “Présentation,” in La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 18.15. La Rochefoucauld withdrew several maxims directly referring to Augustine, probably because he believed that the hardline Augustinianism adopted by Jansenists would lead to despair and atheism. Jansenists contended that God does not grant grace based on whether a person fulfills His commandments or not, but according to His own will. Moreover, they condemned pagan virtues as sins, instead of imperfections, which devalued all human values. Intellectuals in La Rochefoucauld’s circle, such as Mme de Sablé and La Chapelle-Bessé, also raised the same objections. See Moriarty, Disguised Vices, 253–76.16. La Rochefoucauld, “Avis au Lecteur” (note to the reader) withdrawn after the first edition, 1664 (I), 144–45.17. Nietzsche, KSA 13:18[16], translated by Sommer, in “Nietzsche’s Readings on Spinoza,” 176.18. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel.19. Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature, 36–37.20. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel: “Seconde puissance de l’ame qui se porte à la poursuite du bien, ou à la fuite du mal que l’entendement luy a fait connoistre.” And “la puissance, le desir, la resolution de faire quelque chose” (my tranlsation).21. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel: “Dieu nous a laissé nostre libre arbitre, c’est à dire, nostre franche volonté, pour meriter, ou demeriter envers luy” (my tranlsation).22. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s Affirmative Morality,” 64–78.23. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1924. Ibid.25. Ibid.26. Nietzsche, KSA 1886,7[65].27. Ibid., 1880,6[382].28. Ibid.,1883,7[40].29. Ibid., 1878,30[187].30. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 91.31. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 23. See also Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy, 85.32. Nietzsche, KSA,1877,22[107]. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to one of the reviewers who helped me to reformulate my ideas on this point.33. Ibid., 1887,10[57].34. Nietzsche, Ecce homo, “The Case of Wagner,”3.35. Ibid.36. Ibid., KSA 1887,10[57].37. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Pakaluk, 34.38. Ibid., 35–36.39. Ibid., 36–37.40. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Rowe and Broadie, 424.41. Lafond, “La Rochefoucauld, d’une culture à l’autre,” 77. See also Starobinski, “La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives,” 16–34.42. Lafond, “La Rochefoucauld, d’une culture à l’autre,” 7743. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 362.44. Bossuet, Le Sermon de Pâques, I, 509.45. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 260.46. Ibid., The Will to Power, 362.47. Ibid., KSA 1880,6[382].48. Ibid., Human, All Too Human, II, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” 60.49. Ibid., KSA 1876,23[96].50. Ibid., 1888,15[98], quoted from Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 483.51. Ibid., Human, All Too Human, I, 133. See Williams, Nietzsche and the French, 187.52. Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: augustinisme et littérature, 28.53. La Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims, V:10, 6–7.54. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 481.55. Ibid., The Anti-Christ, section 2.56. Anderson, “Friedrich Nietzsche.”57. Richardson, Nietzsche’s System, 28 and 33.58. Ibid., 33–34.59. Nietzche, KSA 1885,1[122].60. Gemes, “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation,” 44.61. Ibid., 38.62. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” 9.63. Nehamas, “Nietzsche, Drives, Selves, and Leonard Bernstein,” 138–39.64. One anonymous reviewer very judiciously offered me these insights.65. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 371.66. Ibid., 786.67. Bett, “Nietzsche, the Greeks, and Happiness,” 45–46.68. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 113.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJiani FanJiani Fan, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Tsinghua University, China. She completed her doctoral dissertation on “Pleasure as a First Principle? Nietzsche and the French Moralists (Pascal, La Rochefoucauld and Montaigne) on Morality and Religion,” at the Comparative Literature Department of Princeton University, USA, which, among others, was supported by a Laurence S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellowship and a Josephine de Karman Fellowship. Her publications include “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Assessments of François de La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims through the Academic Sceptic Argumentative Method of pro and con and Syntactic Analysis” (Early Modern French Studies, 2023); “Friedrich Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal on Skepticisms and Honesty” (History of European Ideas, 2023); “From Libido Dominandi in Disguise to an Apologetic Device? Invention and Reinvention of Sweetness (Douceur) in La Rochefoucauld’s and Pascal’s Works” (Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 2021).