Jim Nichols

Essay 1

Working Draft on Leiter's Theory of the Will

I will be discussing in this paper Nietzsche's positions on free will--but I will focus on a very

specific point that was usefully highlighted for me while reading the article, Nietzsche's Theory

of the Will, by Brian Leiter. Leiter's paper does an excellent job of breaking down the challenge

of understanding Nietzsche on the topic of free will and he does so in a very approachable
manner. Both Nietzsche's position and Leiters paper are still relatively large mountains to climb

with the philosophical skills sets I bring to the table. My efforts to proficiently read and

understand them; and then go beyond that by taking the next step of writing a coherent, useful

paper, from these works is very likely two steps too far for my own philosophical endeavors.

Nevertheless my goal is to provide the core skeleton of a critique that with a number of

revisions can successfully represent a small expansion on the understanding of Nietzsche's

position via Leiter paper and the challenges brought up from it. What follows is certainly a start,

my scope will remain very narrow--specifically to pages 2-6 of Leiters paper that deal with the

phenomenology of willing and Nietzsche's understanding position on it. I hope to expand on

why the phenomenology can create confusions about if there is or isn't free will--Nietzsche says

no and I will work to explain why.

Nietzsche argues that the experiences of will that a person has before an action is not causally

related to the action itself. That sounds very formal and complex but here is a 'for instance' for

you to think through. Lets say I throw a ball.

After I throw the ball I tell you that I willed the action to take place because 'i wanted to throw

the ball' and the proof is that the ball was thrown after I willed it to happen. I feel certain that it

was my own will that caused my arm to throw the ball. Nietzsche would argue that my willing of

my arm to throw the ball, and the ball being thrown by my arm, are two separate instances and

are not casually related--the ball was not thrown because I had the desire, 'will', for my arm to
throw it; and even though I certainly 'feel' like 'i' willed the arm to throw the sensations

occurrence does not necessarily prove that anything other than the 'sensation of willing' has

occurred.

A major point of focus with Nietzsche's position on free will must be with his denial of a

causal link between these two actions of desiring that my arm moves to throw the ball, and my

arm moving to throw the ball. This I believe is where Leiter's paper begins his task.

In his paper Leiter argues that it is Nietzsche's challenge to prove there is no causal relation--
that the burden of proof for the claim that the phenomenon of willing and actions are not directly

related. Leiters stated goal of this paper is to argue that Nietzsche's theory of will is quite

advanced and has the seeds of understanding on the topic of free will that modern cognitive

psychologists have now only begun to bring to fruition through their empirical research. To

achieve this Leiter must give an in depth account of Nietzsche's theory of the will and action.

Leiter walks us through three aspects of Nietzsche's position--the phenomenology of willing,

Nietzsche's claims as to why the phenomenology is misleading, and then Nietzsche's

"explanation" so to speak, of what is really going on. These three aspects of the topic are vital

Leiter says, for understanding Nietzsche's position on this topic of free will.

First Leiter discusses the "phenomenology of willing", which basically means he describes

verbally the process of experiences and sensations you have as you experience "willing"--the

experiences which added up to collectively equal an experience that gives oneself the feeling that

"I am experiencing free will." Next Leiter looks at Nietzsche's argument for why the experiences

that I "am willing" are not actually connected to the actions that actually happen--the supposedly

"willed" actions. Finally Leiter gives a description of Nietzsche's explanation for what does

actually cause actions.

Leiter states that Nietzsche is unique among philosophers because he goes beyond how we

feel as we experience free will, and that Nietzsche actually breaks it down further "into its

component parts" (Leiter 2). First we have, what Leiter calls "the bodily feelings," next, the
"commandeering thought," and finally the "meta-feeling of superiority." Lets use an example to

help better clarify this process--wanting to get a cup of coffee to work on my paper. Basically the

process goes as follows in this description of wanting to get a cup of coffee to work on my

paper. I want a cup of coffee to drink as I struggle to write my paper. So we begin with my

decision--'I decide to go make the coffee'. I then feel the experiences of 'getting up from the desk

in my hotel room' I sense my movement towards the coffee maker and the sensations of moving

away from the seat. This hodge-podge of bodily and muscular sensations are the "bodily

feelings," as Leiter terms them. But these sensations are not the entirety of the process--the
process also requires the 'I decide,' or "commandeering thought," as Leiter calls it. Finally for

Nietzsche we also require a meta-feeling--a thought that connects the thought of deciding to go

get coffee as "mine". "By identifying with the commandeering thought--by taking that to be 'who

I am' (on this occasion)--we feel superior, we experience this affect of superiority" (Leiter 3).

The experience felt willing myself to get the cup of coffee is felt through the body obeying

the thought and that the command itself, to do said action, comes from myself as well. Nietzsche

notes that there is a paradox; within this "willing" I get to be both the one that feels commanded,

and obeys the command, as well as the one who is doing the commanding. This paradox

Nietzsche called "the synthetic concept of the"I" in section 19 of Beyond Good and Evil (Leiter

3). The "I" that is doing the work is both an "I" that commands the action of going to get the

coffee and the "I" that obeys ('Go get the coffee':... 'I' will go get the coffee). As Leiter notes we

"of course....don't experience it, or think of it, that way: we identify the 'I' with the feeling of

commanding, not the feeling of obeying" (Leiter 3). But the reality is that we are both willing the

actions to get the coffee and obeying the willed request. We are both commanding and obeying

at the same time.

For Nietzsche, "the one who wills believes with a reasonable degree of certainty that will and

action are somehow one; he attributes the success, the performance of the willing to the will

itself, and consequently enjoys an increase in the feeling of power that accompanies all success"

(Leiter 3). Leiter finds this to be a vitally important point--"we need not resolve the issue here of
the primacy of the desire for pleasure or desire for power as the fundamental explanatory

mechanisms; for the phenomenology, all that matters is that it be true that there is a feeling of

pleasure attendant upon the sensation of willing, even if that feeling derives from a feeling of

power" (Leiter 4). The key point to Nietzsche's theory of will is that the phenomena does not

require a causal relationship between the phenomena and the action.

Nietzsche's key claim is that the phenomena of willing does not mirror or follow along an

actual causal relationship, "that is, the commandeering thought, with which we identify because

it gives us a feeling of superiority, is not in fact identical with anything that actually stands in a
causal relationship with the resultant action" (Leiter 4). Basically, as the process of feelings and

actions occur in a fast set of conjoined actions and feelings, there appears to be a casual

relationship with which infer from the experience.

I want to have a cup of coffee, I therefore decide to get up and get the coffee. I willed

myself to get coffee.

While this explanation certain feels right to most of us; Nietzsche will argue--and I agree with

him--that one cannot connect the fact that there is a thought with the claim that "I" think it. For

Nietzsche thoughts appear in consciousness when they want to, not when "I" will them to come

into existence in my own head. Leiter does a useful job of, not necessarily clarifying this

position of Nietzsche's but rather fleshing it out--or "thinking through it" as I like to say. Let me

try to do so with this example above.

I feel the desire to have a cup of coffee and label it "I want." Next I make the decision to get

up and get a cup. I "decided" and from this decision desire my body to move towards the coffee

and it does. As Leiter notes, "Nietzsche's phenomenological point then comes to this: a

"thought" that appears in consciousness is not preceded by the phenomenology of willing that

Nietzsche has described... there is no "commandeering thought" preceding the conscious thought

to which the meta-feeling (the affect of superiority) attaches" (Leiter 5). The commandeering
thought and meta-feeling have confused us--they have created the feelings of power and a sense

of self that we identify with the thoughts. This confusion of "I am willing" can then lead us

down many wrong turns that the "I" could never be accurately responsible for. This is the key

point Nietzsche requires us to accept and I believe Leiter does an excellent job walking us

through Nietzsche's proof. My capacity to follow up on this is seems to be poorly thought

through and lacks a strong foundation. This is nonetheless less the first effort to walk with Leiter

and Nietzsche on this question--thought I seem to not even be keeping up with them on this draft

I hope to follow up with further revisions of my own but look forward to comments, questions,
and critiques that can help clarify my efforts.

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Nietzsche's Theory of the Will, Brian Leiter, Philosophers Imprint Volume 7, No. 7, Sept. 2007

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=phimp;rgn=main;idno=3521354.0007.007

Link to full PDF